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ALICE ADAMS 

















“* “You better be givin’ some of these berries the eye so 


| oe Te 


they'll ask you to dance. 














ALICE ADAMS 


BY 


BOOTH TARKINGTON 


AUTHOR OF 


PENROD, PENROD AND SAM, 
SEVENTEEN, THE FLIRT, Etc. 


ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN 


GROSSET & DUNLAP 
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 











Made in the United States of America 








Added Copy 


COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 


COPYBIGHT, 1921, BY THE PICTORIAL REVIEW COMPANY 
PRINTED IN i aaa STATES 


{UB COUNTRY LIVE PaEsé, GARDEE CITY, ®. ¥ 


96! 
Tit T 
Qu 


Cop. ZZ. 


TO 
S. S. McCLURE 


renin 


ae eas 





LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


*“* You better be givin’ some of these berries 
_ the eye so they'll ask you to dance’”’ Frontispiece 


“She looked dreamy but was obviously ser- 


ious . . . ‘I want to go on the stage. 
See SOU Oe a a ee 


“* She had seemed pretty in the particular way 
he liked best; and with every moment he 
spent with her, this prettiness appeared to 
OPN eR 


*** He did tell you,’ Mrs. Adams sobbed, ‘ and 
you wouldn’t give ittohim’” .. . . 894 


ee 
SESE PeSALS Soa 


ss 





ALICE ADAMS 





ALICE ADAMS 


CHAPTER I 


HE patient, an old-fashioned man, thought 

the nurse made a mistake in keeping both of 

the windows open, and her sprightly dis- 
regard of his protests added something to his hatred. 
of her. Every evening he told her that anybody 
with ordinary gumption ought to realize that night 
air was bad for the human frame. “The human 
frame won’t stand everything, Miss Perry,” he 
warned her, resentfully. ‘Even a child, if it had 
just ordinary gumption, ought to know enough not to 
let the night air blow on sick people—yes, nor well 
people, either! ‘Keep out of the night air, no matter | 
how well you feel.’ That’s what my mother used to 
tell me when I was a boy. ‘Keep out of the night 
air, Virgil,’ she’d say. ‘Keep out of the night air.’” 
“T expect probably her mother told her the same 


thing,” the nurse suggested. 
3 


Se ALICE ADAMS 
“Of course she did. My grandmother “s 





“Oh, I guess your grandmother thought so, Mr. 
Adams! That was when all this flat central country 
was swampish and hadn’t been drained off yet. I 
guess the truth must been the swamp mosquitoes 
it people and gave ’em malaria, especially before 
they began to put screens in their windows. Well, 
we got screens in these windows, and no mosquitoes 
are goin’ to bite us; so just you be a good boy and 
rest your mind and go to sleep like you need to.” 

“Sleep?” he said. “‘Likely!”’ 

He thought the night air worst of all in April; he 
hadn’t a doubt it would kill him, he declared. “It’s 
miraculous what the human frame will survive,” he 
admitted on the last evening of that month. “But 
you and the doctor ought to both be taught it won’t 
stand too dang much! You poison a man and 
poison and poisen him with this April night air——”’ 

““Can’t poison you with much more of it,” Miss 
‘Perry interrupted him, indulgently. “To-morrow 
it'll be May night air, and I expect that’ll be a lot 
better for you, don’t you? Now let’s just sober 
down and be a good boy and get some nice sound 
sleep.” | 
She gave him his medicine, and, having set the 


ALICE ADAMS 5 


glass upon the center table, returned to her cot, 
where, after a still interval, she snored faintly. Upon 
this, his expression became that of a man goaded out 
of overpowering weariness into irony. 

“Sleep? Oh, certainly, thank you!”’ 

However, he did sleep intermittently, drowsed 
between times, and Breil: dreamed; but, forgetting 
his dreams before he opened his eyes, and having. 
some part of him all the while aware of his discom- 
fort, he believed, as usual, that he lay awake the 
whole night long. He was conscious of the city as: 
of some single great creature resting fitfully in the 
dark outside his windows. It lay all round about, 
in the damp cover of its night cloud of smoke, and 
tried to keep quiet for a few hours after midnight, 
but was too powerful a growing thing ever to lie 
altogether still. Even while it strove to sleep it 
muttered with digestions of the day before, and these 
already merged with rumblings of the morrow. 
“Owl” cars, bringing in last passengers over distant 
trolley-lines, now and then howled on a curve; far- 
away metallic stirrings could be heard from factories 
in the sooty suburbs on the plain outside the city; 
east, west, and south, switch-engines chugged and 
snorted on sidings; and everywhere in the air there 


6 ALICE ADAMS 


seemed to be a faint, voluminous hum as of innumer- 
able wires trembling overhead to vibration of ma- 
chinery underground. 

In his youth Adams might have been less resentful 
of sounds such as these when they interfered with 
his night’s sleep: even during an illness he migh?é 
have taken some pride in them as proof of his citizen- 
ship in a “live town’’; but at fifty-five he merely 
hated them because they kept him awake. They 


>? 


“pressed on his nerves,” as he put it; and so did 
almost everything else, for that matter. 

He heard the milk-wagon drive into the cross- 
street beneath his windows and stop at each house. 
The milkman carried his jars round to the “back 
porch,” while the horse moved slowly ahead to the 
gate of the next customer and waited there. “He’s 
gone into Pollocks’,”” Adams thought, following this 
progress. “I hope it'll sour on ’em before break- 
fast. Delivered the Andersons’. Now he’s getting 
out ours. Listen to the darn brute! What’s he care 
who wants to sleep!” His complaint was of the horse, 
who casually shifted weight with a clink of steel 
shoes on the worn brick pavement of the street, 
and then heartily shook himself in his harness, per- 
haps to dislodge a fly far ahead of its season. Light 


ALICE ADAMS 7 


had just filmed the windows; and with that the first 
sparrow woke, chirped instantly, and roused neigh- 
bours in the trees of the small yard, including a loud- 
voiced robin. Vociferations began irregularly, but 
were soon unanimous. 

“Sleep? Dang likely now, ain’t it!” 

Night sounds were becoming day sounds; the 
far-away hooting of freight-engines seemed brisker 
than an hour ago in the dark. A cheerful whistler 
passed the house, even more careless of sleepers than 
the milkman’s horse had been; then a group of 
coloured workmen came by, and although it was 
impossible to be sure whether they were homeward 
bound from night-work or on their way to day- 
work, at least it was certain that they were jocose. 
Loose, aboriginal laughter preceded them afar, and 
beat on the air long after they had gone by. 

The sick-room night-light, shielded from his eyes 
by a newspaper propped against a water-pitcher, still 
showed a thin glimmering that had grown offensive 
to Adams. In his wandering and enfeebled thoughts, 
which were much more often imaginings than reason- 
ings, the attempt of the night-light to resist the 
dawn reminded him of something unpleasant, 
though he could not discover just what the un- 


8 ALICE ADAMS 


pleasant thing was. Here was a puzzle that irritated 
jaim the more because he could not solve it, yet 
always seemed just on the point of a solution. 
However, he may have lost nothing cheerful by 
remaining in the dark upon the matter; for if he had 
been a little sharper in this introspection he might 
lave concluded that the squalor of the night-light, 
in its seeming effort to show against the forerunning 
of the sun itself, had stimulated some half-buried 
perception within him to sketch the painful little 
synopsis of an autobiography. 

In spite of noises without, he drowsed again,. not 
‘knowing that he did; and when he opened his eyes 
‘the nurse was just rising from her cot. He took no 
pleasure in the sight, it may be said. She exhibited 
to him a face mismodelled by sleep, and set like a 
clay face left on its cheek in a hot and dry studio. 
‘She was still only in part awake, however, and by 
the time she had extinguished the night-light and 
given her patient his tonic, she had recovered 
enough plasticity. “Well, isn’t that grand! We’ve 
had another good night,” she said as she departed to 
dress in the bathroom. 

“Yes, you had another!” he retorted, though not 
until after she had closed the door. 


ALICE ADAMS 9 


Presently he heard his daughter moving about in 
her room across the narrow hall, and so knew that she 
had risen. He hoped she would come in to see him 
soon, for she was the one thing that didn’t press on 
his nerves, he felt; though the thought of her hurt 
him, as, indeed, every thought hurt him. But it 
was his wife who came first. 

She wore a lank cotton wrapper, and a crescent of 
gray hair escaped to one temple from beneath the 
handkerchief she had worn upon her head for the 
night and still retained; but she did everything 
possible to make her expression cheering. 

“Oh, you’re better again! I can see that, as soon 


> 


as I look at you,” she said. ‘Miss Perry tells me 
you’ve had another splendid night.” 

He made a sound of irony, which seemed to 
dispose unfavourably of Miss Perry, and then, in 
order to be more certainly intelligible, he added, 
“She slept well, as usual!” 

But his wife’s smile persisted. “It’s a good sign 
to be cross; it means you’re practically convalescent 
right now.” 

“Oh, I am, am I?” 

“No doubt in the world!” she exclaimed. ‘Why, 


you're practically a well man, Virgil—all except 


10 ALICE ADAMS 


getting your strength back, of course, and that isn’t 
going to take long. You'll be right on your feet in a 
couple of weeks from now.” 

Oh, I will?” 

“Of course you will!’ She laughed. briskly, and, 
going to the table in the center of the room, moved 
his glass of medicine an inch or two, turned a book 
over so that it lay upon its other side, and for a few 
moments occupied herself with similar futilities, 
having taken on the air of a person who makes things 
neat, though she produced no such actual effect upon 
them. “Of course you will,’ she repeated, ab- 
sently. “You'll be as strong as you ever were; 
maybe stronger.”’ She paused for a moment, not 
looking at him, then added, cheerfully, ““So that 
you can fly around and find something really good 

*to get into.” | 

Something important between them came near the 
surface here, for though she spoke with what seemed 
but a casual cheerfulness, there was a little betraying 
break in her voice, a trembling just perceptible in 
the utterance of the final word. And she still kept 
up the affectation of being helpfully preoccupied 
with the table, and did not look at her husband— 
perhaps because they had been married so many 


ALICE ADAMS 11 


years that without looking she knew just what his 
expression would be, and preferred to avoid the actual 
sight of it as long as possible. Meanwhile, he stared 
hard at her, his lips beginning to move with little 
distortions not lacking in the pathos of a sick 
_man’s agitation. 

“So that’s it,” he said. “That’s what you’re 
hinting at.” 

***Hinting?’”? Mrs. Adams looked surprised and 
indulgent. “Why, I’m not doing’ any hinting, 
Virgil.” 

“What did you say about my finding ‘something 
good to get into?’” he asked, sharply. ‘‘Don’t you 
call that hinting?”’ 

Mrs. Adams turned toward him now; she came to 
the bedside and would have taken his hand, but he 
quickly moved it away from her. 

“You mustn’t let yourself get nervous,” she said. 
“But of course when you get well there’s only one 
thing to do. You mustn’t go back to that old hole 
again.” 

“Old hole?’ That’s what you call it, is it?” In 
spite of his weakness, anger made his voice strid- 
ent, and upon this stimulation she spoke more ur- 
gently. | . 


12 ALICE ADAMS 


“You just mustn’t go back to it, Virgil. It’s not 
fair to any of us, and you know it isn’t.” 

“Don’t tell me what I know, please!”’ 

She clasped her hands, suddenly carrying her 
urgency to plaintive entreaty. ‘Virgil, you won’t 
go back to that hole?”’ 

“That’s a nice word to use to me!” he said. 
“Call a man’s business a hole!” 

“Virgil, if you don’t owe it to me to look for some- 
thing different, don’t you owe it to your children? 
Don’t tell me you won’t do what we all wart you 
to, and what you know in your heart you ought to! 
And if you have got into one of your stubborn fits 
and are bound to go back there for no other reason 
except to have your own way, don’t tell me so, for I 
can’t bear it!” 

He looked up at her fiercely. ‘“You’ve got a 
fine way to cure a sick man!”’ he said; but she had 
concluded her appeal—for that time—and instead 
of making any more words in the matter, let him see 
that there were tears in her eyes, shook her head, and 
left the room. 

Alone, he lay breathing rapidly, his emaciated 
chest proving itself equal to the demands his emotion 
put upon it. “Fine!” he repeated, with husky 


ALICE ADAMS 13 


1? 


indignation. ‘Fine way tocureasick man! Fine 
Then, after a silence, he gave forth whispering 
sounds as of laughter, his expression the while re- 
maining sore and far from humour. 

“And give us our daily bread!’’ he added, mean- 
ing that his wife’s little performance was no novelty. 


CHAPTER II 
N FACT, the agitation of Mrs. Adams was 


genuine, but so well under her control that its 

traces vanished during the three short steps she 
took to cross the narrow hall between her husband’s 
door and the one opposite. Her expression was 
matter-of-course, rather than pathetic, as she entered 
the pretty room where her daughter, half dressed, 
sat before a dressing-table and played with the 
reflections of a three-leafed mirror framed in blue 
enamel. That is, just before the moment of her 
mother’s entrance, Alice had been playing with 
the mirror’s reflections—posturing her arms and 
her expressions, clasping her hands behind her neck, 
and tilting back her head to foreshorten the face in 
a tableau conceived to represent sauciness, then one 
of smiling weariness, then one of scornful toleration, 
and all very piquant; but as the door opened she 
hurriedly resumed the practical, and occupied her 
hands in the arrangement of her plentiful brownish 


hair. 
14 


ALICE ADAMS 15 


They were pretty hands, of a shapeliness delicate 
and fine. “The best things she’s got!” a cold 
blooded girl friend said of them, and meant to 
include Alice’s mind and character in the implied 
list of possessions surpassed by the notable hands. 
However that may have been, the rest of her was 
well enough. She was often called “a right pretty 
girl” —temperate praise meaning a girl rather 
pretty than otherwise, and this she deserved, to say 
the least. Even in repose she deserved it, though 
repose was anything but her habit, being seldom 
seen upon her except at home. On exhibition she 
led a life of gestures, the unkind said to make her 
lovely hands more memorable; but all of her usually 
accompanied the gestures of the hands, the shoulders 
ever giving them their impulses first, and even her 
feet being called upon, at the same time, for elo- 
quence. 

So much liveliness took proper place as only 
accessory to that of the face, where her vivacity 
reached its climax; and it was unfortunate that an 
ungifted young man, new in the town, should have 
attempted to define the effect upon him of all this 
generosity of emphasis. He said that “the way 
she used her cute hazel eyes and the wonderful 


16 ALICE ADAMS 


glow of her facial expression gave her a mighty 
spiritual quality.” His actual rendition of the word 
was “‘spirichul’’; but it was not his pronunciation 
that embalmed this outburst in the perennial 
laughter of Alice’s girl friends; they made the mis- 
fortune far less his than hers. 

Her mother comforted her too heartily, insisting 
that Alice had “plenty enough spiritual qualities,” 
certainly more than possessed by the other girls 
who flung the phrase at her, wooden things, jealous 
of everything they were incapable of themselves; 
and then Alice, getting more championship. than © 
she sought, grew uneasy lest Mrs. Adams should 
repeat such defenses “outside the family’; and Mrs. 
Adams ended by weeping because the daughter so 
distrusted her intelligence. Alice frequently thought 
it necessary to instruct her mother. 

Her morning greeting was an instruction to-day; 
or, rather, it was an admonition in the style of an 
entreaty, the more petulant as Alice thought that 
Mrs. Adams might have had a glimpse of the postur- 
ings to the mirror. This was a needless worry; the 
mother had caught a thousand _such glimpses, 
with Alice unaware, and she thought nothing of the 
one just flitted. 


ALICE ADAMS 17 


“For heaven’s sake, mama, come clear inside the 
room and shut the door! Please don’t leave it open 
for everybody to look at me!” 

“There isn’t anybody to see you,” Mrs. Adams 
explained, obeying. ‘“‘Miss Perry’s gone down- 
stairs, and———”’ 

*“Mama, I heard you in papa’s room,” Alice said, 
not dropping the note of complaint. “I could 
hear both of you, and I don’t think you ought to 
get poor old papa so upset—not in his present 


condition, anyhow.” 
Mrs. Adams seated herself on the edge of the bed. 


**He’s better all the time,” she said, not disturbed. 
“He’s almost well. The doctor says so and Miss 
Perry says so; and if we don’t get him into the right 
frame of mind now we never will. ‘The first day 
he’s outdoors he'll go back to that old hole—you’ll 
see! And if he once does that, he'll settle down 
there and it’ll be too late and we'll never get him 
out.” 

“Well, anyhow, I think you could use a little more 
tact with him.” 

“I do try to,” the mother sighed. ‘“‘It never was 
much use with him. I don’t think you understand 
him as well as I do, Alice.” 


18 ALICE ADAMS 


“There’s one thing I don’t understand about 
either of you,’” Alice returned, crisply. “Before 
people get married they can do anything they want 
to with each other. Why can’t they Go the same 
thing after they’re married? When you and. papa 
were young people and engaged, he’d have done 
anything you wanted him to. That must have been 
because you knew how to manage him then. Why 
can’t you go at him the same way now?” 

Mrs. Adams sighed again, and laughed a little, 
making no other response; but Alice persisted. 
“Well, why can’t you? Why can’t you ask him to 
do things the way you used to ask him when you 
were just in love with each other? Why don’t you 
anyhow try it, mama, instead of ding-donging at 
him?” 

““*TDing-donging at him,’ Alice?”” Mrs. Adams said, 
with a pathos somewhat emphasized. “Is that how 
my trying to do what I can for you strikes you?” 

“Never mind that; it’s nothing to hurt your 
feelings.” Alice disposed of the pathos briskly. 
“Why don’t you answer my question? What’s 
the matter with using a little more tact on papa? 
Why can’t you treat him the way you probably did 
when you were young people, before you were 


ALICE ADAMS 19 


married? I never have understood why people 
can’t do that.” 

“Perhaps you will understand some day,” her 
mother said, gently. ‘‘ Maybe you will when you’ve 
been married twenty-five years.” 

“You keep evading. Why don’t you answer my 
question right straight out?” 

“There are questions you can’t answer to young 
people, Alice.” 

“You mean because we’re too young to under- 
stand the answer? I don’t see that at all. At 
twenty-two a girl’s supposed to have some intelli- 
gence, isn’t she? And intelligence is the ability to 
understand, isn’t it? Why do I have to wait till 
I’ve lived with a man twenty-five years to under- 
stand why you can’t be tactful with papa?”’ 

“You may understand some things before that,” 
Mrs. Adams said, tremulously. “‘You may under- 
stand how you hurt me sometimes. Youth can’t 
know everything by being intelligent, and by the 
_ time you could understand the answer you’re asking 
for you’d know it, and wouldn’t need to ask. You 
don’t understand your father, Alice; you don’t 
know what it takes to change him when he’s made up 
_ his mind to be stubbora” 


20 ALICE ADAMS 


Alice rose and began to get herself into a skirt. 
“Well, I don’t think making scenes ever changes 
anybody,” she grumbled. “I think a little jolly 
persuasion goes twice as far, myself.” 

***A little jolly persuasion!’”? Her mother turned 
the echo of this phrase into an ironic lament. “Yes, 
there was a time when I thought that, too! It didn’t 
work; that’s all.” 

‘Perhaps you left the jolly’ part of it out, mama.” 

For the second time that morning—it was now a 
little after seven o’clock—tears seemed about to 
offer their solace to Mrs. Adams. “I might have 
expected you to say that, Alice; you never do miss a 
chance,” she said, gently. ‘“‘It seems queer you don’t 
some time miss just one chance!” 

But Alice, progressing with her toilet, appeared to 
be little concerned. ‘“‘Oh, well, I think there are 
better ways of managing a man than just hammering 
at him.” 

Mrs. Adams uttered a little cry of pain. “‘‘Ham- 
mering, Alice?” 

“Tf you'd left it entirely to me,” her daughter 
went on, briskly, “I believe papa’d already be willing 
to do anything we want him to.” 

“That’s it; tell me I spoil everything. Well, I 


ALICE ADAMS 21 


won’t interfere from now on, you can be sure of 
i," 

Please don’t talk like that,” Alice said, quickly. 
“T’m old enough to realize that papa may need 
pressure of all sorts; I only think it makes him more 
obstinate to get him cross. You probably do 
understand him better, but that’s one thing I’ve 
found out and you haven’t. There!” She gave 
her mother a friendly tap on the shoulder and went to 
the door. “Tl hop in and say hello to him now.” 

As she went, she continued the fastening of her 
blouse, and appeared in her father’s room with one 
hand still thus engaged, but she patted his forehead 
with the other. 

“Poor old papa-daddy!” she said, gaily. “‘Every 
time he’s better somebody talks him into getting so 
mad he has a relapse. It’s a shame!” 

Her father’s eyes, beneath their melancholy brows, 
looked up at her wistfully. “I suppose you heard 
your mother going for me,” he said. 

“TI heard you going for her, too!”’ Alice laughed. 
“What was it all about?” 

“Oh, the same danged old story!” 

**You mean she wants you to try something new 
when you get well?” Alice asked, with cheerful 


22 ALICE ADAMS 


innocence. “So we could all have a lot more 
money?” 

At this his sorrowful forehead was more sorrowful 
than ever. The deep horizontal lines moved upward 
to a pattern of suffering so familiar to his daughter 
that it meant nothing to her; but he spoke quietly. 
“Yes; so we wouldn’t have any money at all, most 
likely.” 

“Oh, no!” she laughed, and, finishing with her 
blouse, patted his cheeks with both hands. “Just 
think how many grand openings there must be for 
a man that knows as much ‘as you do! [I always did 
believe» you could get rich if you only cared _ to, 
papa.” 

But upon his forehead the painful pattern still 
deepened. “Don’t you think we've always had 
enough, the way things are, Alice?”’ 

“Not the way things are!’ She patted his 
cheeks again; laughed again. “It used to be 
enough, maybe—anyway we did skimp along on it— 
but the way things are now I expect. mama’s really 
pretty practical in her ideas, though, I think it’s a 
shame for her to bother you about it while you’re so 
weak. Don’t you worry about it, though; just think 
about other things till you get strong.” 


ALICE ADAMS 23 


“You know,” he said; “you know it isn’t exactly 
the easiest thing in the world for a man of my age to 
find these grand openings you speak of. And when 
you ve passed half-way from fifty to sixty you’re apt 
to see some risk in giving up what you know how to 
do and trying something new.” 

“My, what a frown!” she cried, blithely.“ Didn’t 
I tell you to stop thinking about it till you get all 
well?” She bent over him, giving him a gay little 
kiss on the bridge of his nose. “There! I must 
run to breakfast. Cheer up now! Aw “voir!” 
And with her pretty hand she waved further en- 
couragement from the closing door as she departed. 

Lightsomely descending the narrow stairway, she 
whistled as she went, her fingers drumming time on 
the rail; and, still whistling, she came into the 
dining-room, where her mother and her brother 
were already at the table. The brother, a thin and 
sallow boy of twenty, greeted her without much 
approval as she took her place. 

“Nothing seems to trouble you!” he said. 

_ “No; nothing much,” she made airy response. 
*What’s troubling yourself, Walter?” 

“Don’t let that worry you!”’ he returned, seeming 

to consider this to be repartee of an effective sort; 


24 ALICE ADAMS 


for he furnished a short laugh to go with it, and 
turned to his coffee with the manner of one who has 
satisfactorily closed an episode. 

*“Walter always seems to have so many secrets!” 
Alice said, studying him shrewdly, but with a friendly 
enough amusement in her scrutiny. “Everything 
he does or says seems to be acted for the benefit of 
some mysterious audience inside himself, and he al- 
ways gets its applause. Take what he said just now: 
he seems to think it means something, but if it does, 
why, that’s just another secret between him and the 
secret audience inside of him! We don’t really know 
anything about Walter at all, do we, mama?” 

Walter laughed again, in a manner that sustained 
her theory well enough; then after finishing his 
coffee, he took from his pocket a flattened packet in 
glazed blue paper; extracted with stained fingers a 
bent and wrinkled little cigarette, lighted it, hitched 
up his belted trousers with the air of a person who 
turns from trifles to things better worth his attention, 
and left the room. 

Alice laughed as the door closed. “He’s all 
secrets,’ she said. “Don’t you think you really 
ought to know more about him, mama?” 

“T’m sure he’s a good boy,” Mrs. Adams returned, 


ALICE ADAMS 25 


thoughtfully. “‘He’s been very brave about not 
being able to have the advantages that are enjoyed 
by the boys he’s grown up with. Ive never heard 
a word of complaint from him.” 

“About his not being sent to college?’’ Alice 
cried. “I should think you wouldn’t! He didn’t 
even have enough ambition to finish high school!”’ 

Mrs. Adams sighed. “It seemed to me Walter 
lost his ambition when nearly all the boys he’d 
grown up with went to Eastern schools to prepare 


for college, and we couldn’t afford to send him. If 


3? 





only your father would have listene 

Alice interrupted: “What nonsense! Walter hated 
books and studying, and athletics, too, for that 
matter. He doesn’t care for anything nice that 
I ever heard of. What do you suppose he does 
like, mama? He must like something or other 
somewhere, but what do you suppose it is? What 
does he do with his time?”’ 

“‘Why, the poor boy’s at Lamb and Company’s all 
day. He doesn’t get through until five in the 
afternoon; he doesn’t have much time.”’ 

“Well, we never have dinner until about seven, 
and he’s always late for dinner, and goes out, heaven 
knows where, right afterward!”’ Alice shook her 


26 ALICE ADAMS 


head. “He used to go with our friends’ boys, but 
I don’t think he does now.” 

“Why, how could he?” Mrs. Adams protested. 
“That isn’t his fault, poor child! The boys he 
knew when he was younger are nearly all away at 
college.” 

“Yes, but he doesn’t see anything of ’em when 
they’re here at holiday-time or vacation. None of 
’em come to the house any more.” 

“I suppose he’s made other friends. It’s natural 
for him to want companions, at his age.” 

“Yes,” Alice said, with disapproving emphasis. 
“But who are they? I’ve got an idea he plays pool 
at some rough place down-town.”’ 

‘Oh, no; I’m sure he’s a steady boy,”” Mrs. Adams 
protested, but her tone was not that of thorough- 
going conviction, and she added, “Life might be a 
very different thing for him if only your father can 
be brought to see——” 

“Never mind, mama! It isn’t me that has to be 
convinced, you know; and we can do a lot more 
with papa if we just let him alone about it for a 
day or two. Promise me you won’t say any more to 
him until—well, until he’s able to come downstairs 
to table. Will you?” 


ALICE ADAMS 27 
Mrs. Adams bit her lip, which had begun to 


tremble. “I think you can trust me to know a few 
things, Alice,” she said. “I’m a little older than 
you, you know.” 

*That’s a good girl!” Alice jumped up, laughing. 
“Don’t forget it’s the same’ as a promise, and do 
just cheer him up a little. Ill say good-bye to him 
before I go out.” 

“Where are you going?”’ 

“Oh, I’ve got lots todo. I thought Pd run out to 
Mildred’s to see what she’s going to wear to-night, 
and then I want to go down and buy a yard of 
chiffon and some narrow ribbon to make new 
bows for my slippers—you'll have to give me some 
money——”’ 

“If he'll give it to me!” her mother lamented, as 
they went toward the front stairs together; but an 
hour later she came into Alice’s room with a bill in 
her hand. 

“‘He has some money in his bureau drawer,” she 
said. “He finally told me where it was.” 

There were traces of emotion in her voice, and 
Alice, looking shrewdly at her, saw moisture in her 
eyes. 


“Mama!” she cried. “You didn’t do what you 


28 ALICE ADAMS 


pranised me you wouldn’t, did you—not before Miss 
Perry!” 

“Miss Perry’s getting him some broth,” Mrs. 
Adams returned, calmly. “Besides, you’re mis- 
taken in saying I promised you anything; I said I 
thought you could trust me to know what is right.” 

“So you did bring it up again!’ And Alice 
swung away from her, strode to her father’s door, 
flung it open, went to him, and put a light hand 
soothingly over his unrelaxed forehead. 

“Poor old papa!” she said. “It’s a shame how 
everybody wants to trouble him. He shan’t be 
bothered any more at all! He doesn’t need to have 
everybody telling him how to get away from that 
old hole he’s worked in so long and begin to make us 
all nice and rich. He knows how!” 

Thereupon she kissed him a consoling good-bye, 


and made another gay departure, the charming hand 


again fluttering like a white butterfly in the shadow 
of the closing door. 


CHAPTER III 


RS. ADAMS had remained in Alice’s room, 
but her mood seemed to have changed, 
during her daughter’s little more than 






momentary absence. 

“What did he say ?” she asked, quickly, and her 
tone was hopeful. 

“Say?’” Alice repeated, impatiently. “Why, 
nothing. I didn’t let him. Really, mama, I think 
the best thing for you to do would be to just keep out 
of his room, because I don’t believe you can go in 
there and not talk to him about it, and if you do 
talk we'll never get him to do the right thing. 
Never!” 

The mother’s response was a grieving silence; she 
turned from her daughter and walked to the door. 

“Now, for goodness’ sake!” Alice cried. “Don’t 
go making tragedy out of my offering you a little 
practical advice!” 

“Tm not,” Mrs. Adams gulped,‘halting. “I’m 


just—just going to dust the downstairs, Alice.” 
29 


30 ALICE ADAMS 


And with her face still averted, she went out into the 
little hallway, closing the door behind her. A mo- 
ment later she could be heard descending the stairs, 
the sound of her footsteps carrying somehow an 
effect of resignation. 

Alice listened, sighed, and, breathing the words, 
“Oh, murder!’ turned to cheerier matters. She 
put on a little apple-green turban with a dim 
gold band round it, and then, having shrouded the 
turban in a white veil, which she kept pushed up 
above her forehead, she got herself into a tan coat 
of soft cloth fashioned with rakish severity. After 
that, having studied herself gravely in a long glass, 
she took from one of the drawers of her dressing- 
table a black leather card-case cornered in silver 
filigree, but found it empty. 

She opened another drawer wherein were two 
white pasteboard boxes of cards, the one set showing 
simply ‘‘Miss Adams,” the other engraved in 
Gothic characters, “Miss Alys Tuttle Adams.” 
The latter belonged to Alice’s “‘Alys”’ period—most 
girls go through it; and Alice must have felt that she 
had graduated, for, after frowning thoughtfully at 
the exhibit this morning, she took the box with its 
contents, and let the white shower fall from her 


ALICE ADAMS 31 


fingers into the waste-basket beside her small desk. 
She replenished the card-case from the “Miss 
Adams” box; then, having found a pair of fresh 
white gloves, she tucked an ivory-topped Malacca 
walking-stick under her arm and set forth. 

She went down the stairs, buttoning her gloves and 
still wearing the frown with which she had put 
“‘Alys”’ finally out of her life. She descended slowly, 
and paused on the lowest step, looking about her 
with an expression that needed but a slight deepening 
to betoken bitterness. Its connection with her 
dropping “‘Alys”’ forever was slight, however. 

The small frame house, about fifteen years old, 
was already inclining to become a new Colonial 
relic. The Adamses had built it, moving into it 
from the “Queen Anne” house they had rented 
until they took this step in fashion. But fifteen 
years is a long time to stand still in the midland 
country, even for a house, and this one was lightly 
made, though the Adamses had not realized how 
flimsily until they had lived in it for some time. 
‘Solid, compact, and convenient”’ were the instruc- 
tions to the architect; and he had made it compact 
successfully. Alice. pausing at the foot of the stair- 
way, was at the same time fairly in the “living- 


32 ALICE ADAMS 


syoom,”’ for the only separation between the “‘living 
room” and the hall was a demarcation suggé@sted to 
willing imaginations by a pair of wooden columns 
painted white. These columns, pine under the 
paint, were bruised and chipped at the base; one of 
them showed a crack that threatened to become a 
split; the ““hard-wood”’ floor had become uneven; and 
in a corner the walls apparently failed of solidity, 
where the wall-paper had declined to accompany 
some staggerings of the plaster beneath it. 

The furniture was in great part an accumulation 
begun with the wedding gifts; though some of it was 
older, two large patent rocking-chairs and a foot- 
stool having belonged to Mrs. Adams’s mother in 
the days of hard brown plush and veneer. For 
decoration there were pictures and vases. Mrs. 
Adams had always been fond of vases, she said, and 
every year her husband’s Christmas present to her 
was a vase of one sort or another—whatever the 
clerk showed him, marked at about twelve or four- 
teen dollars. The pictures were some of them etch- 
ings framed in gilt: Rheims, Canterbury, schooners 
grouped against a wharf; and Alice could remem- 
ber how, in her childhood, her father sometimes 
pointed out the watery reflections in this last as 


«se ea ." a: 


ALICE ADAMS 33 


very fine. But it was a long time since he had 
shown interest in such things—‘‘or in anything 
much,” as she thought. 

Other pictures were two water-colours in baroque 
frames; one being the Amalfi monk on a pergola 
wall, while the second was a yard-wide display of 
iris blossoms, painted by Alice herself at fourteen, 
as a birthday gift to her mother. Alice’s glance 
paused upon it now with no great pride, but showed 
more approval of an enormous photograph of the 
Colosseum. This she thought of as “‘the only good 
thing in the room’’; it possessed and bestowed dis- 
tinction, she felt; and she did not regret having won 
her struggle to get it hung in its conspicuous place of 
honour over the mantelpiece. Formerly that place 
had been held for years by a steel-engraving, an 
accurate representation of the Suspension Bridge at 
Niagara Falls. It was almost as large as its succes- 
sor, the ‘“‘Colosseum,”’ and it had been presented to 
Mr. Adams by colleagues in his department at Lamb 
and Company’s. Adams had shown some feeling 
when Alice began to urge its removal to obscurity in 
the “upstairs hall’’; he even resisted for several days 
after she had. the ‘‘Colosseum” charged to him, 


framed in oak, and sent to the house. She cheered 


34 ALICE ADAMS 


him up, of course, when he gave way; and her heart 
never misgave her that there might be a doubt 
which of the two pictures was the more dismaying. 

Over the pictures, the vases, the old brown plush 
rocking-chairs and the stool, over the three gilt 
chairs, over the new chintz-covered easy chair and 
the gray velure sofa—over everything everywhere, 
was the familiar coating of smoke grime. It had 
worked into every fibre of the lace curtains, dingying 
them to an unpleasant gray; it lay on the window- 
sills and it dimmed the glass panes; it covered the 
walls, covered the ceiling, and was smeared darker 
and thicker in all corners. Yet here was no fault of 
housewifery; the curse could not be lifted, as the 
ingrained smudges permanent on the once white 
woodwork proved. The grime was perpetually re- 
newed; scrubbing only ground it in. 

This particular ugliness was small part of Alice’s 
discontent, for though the coating grew a little 
deeper each year she was used to it. Moreover, she 
knew that she was not likely to find anything better 
in a thousand miles, so long as she kept to cities, and 
that none of her friends, however opulent, had any 
advantage of her here. Indeed, throughout all the 
great soft-coal country, people who consider them- 


ALICE ADAMS i 


selves comparatively poor may find this consolation: 
cleanliness has been added to the virtues and beati- 
tudes that money can not buy. 

Alice brightened a little as she went forward to the 
front door, and she brightened more when the spring 
breeze met her there. Then all depression left her 
as she walked down the short brick path to the 
sidewalk, looked up and down the street, and 
saw how bravely the maple shade-trees, in spite of 
the black powder they breathed, were flinging out 
their thousands of young green particles overhead. 

She turned north, treading the new little shadows 
on the pavement briskly, and, having finished button- 
ing her gloves, swung down her Malacca stick from 
under her arm to let it tap a more leisurely accom- 
paniment to her quick, short step. She had to 
step quickly if she was to get anywhere; for the 
closeness of heg skirt, in spite of its little length, 
permitted no natural stride; but she was pleased to 
be impeded, these brevities forming part of her show 
of fashion. 

Other pedestrians found them not without charm, 
though approval may have been lacking here and 
there; and at the first crossing Alice suffered what 
she might have accounted an actual injury, had she 


36 ALICE ADAMS 


allowed herself to be so sensitive. An elderly woman 
in fussy black silk stood there, waiting for a street~ 
ear; she was all of a globular modelling, with a face 
patterned like a frost-bitten peach; and that the 
approaching gracefulness was uncongenial she naively 
made too evident. Her round, wan eyes seemed 
roused to bitter life as they rose from the curved 
high heels of the buckled slippers to the tight little 
skirt, and thence with startled ferocity to the 
Malacca cane, which plainly appeared to her as a 
decoration not more astounding than it was insult- 
ing. 

Perceiving that the girl was bowing to her, the 
globular lady hurriedly made shift to alter her 
injurious expression. “Good morning, Mrs. Dow- 
ling,” Alice said, gravely. Mrs. Dowling returned 
the salutation with a smile as convincingly benevo- 
lent as the ghastly smile upon a Santa Claus face; 
and then, while Alice passed on, exploded toward 
her a single compacted breath through tightened 
lips. 

The sound was eloquently audible, though Mrs. 
Dowling remained unaware that in this or any 
manner whatever she had shed a light upon her 
thoughts; for it was her lifelong innocent ronvictiou 


ALICE ADAMS 37 


that other, people saw her only as she wished to be 
seen, and heard from her only what she intended 
to be heard. At home it was always her husband 
who pulled down the shades of their bedroom win- 
dow. 

Alice looked serious for a few moments after the 
little encounter, then found some consolation in the 
behaviour of a gentleman of forty or so who was 
coming toward her. Like Mrs. Dowling, he had 
begun to show consciousness of Alice’s approach 
while she was yet afar off; but his tokens were of a 
kind pleasanter to her. He was like Mrs. Dowling 
again, however, in his conception that Alice would 
not realize the significance of what he did. He 
passed his hand over his neck-scarf to see that it 
lay neatly to his collar, smoothed a lapel of his 
coat, and adjusted his hat, seeming to be preoccupied 
the while with problems that kept his eyes to the 
pavement; then, as he came within a few feet of her, 
he looked up, as in a surprised recognition almost 
dramatic, smiled winningly, lifted his hat decisively, 
and carried it to the full arm’s length. 

Alice’s response was all he could have asked. The 
cane in her right hand stopped short in its swing, 
while her left hand moved in a pretty gesture as if 


96 ALICE ADAMS 


an impulse carried it toward the heart; and she 
smiled, with her under lip caught suddenly between 
her teeth. Months ago she had seen an actress 
use this smile in a play, and it came perfectly to 
Alice now, without conscious direction, it had been 
so well acquired; but the pretty hand’s little impulse 
toward the heart was an original bit all her own, 
on the spur of the moment. 

The gentleman went on, passing from her forward 
vision as he replaced his hat. Of himself he was 
nothing to Alice, except for the gracious circum- 
stance that he had shown strong consciousness of a 
pretty girl. He was middle-aged, substantial, a 
family man, securely married; and Alice had with 
him one of those long acquaintances that never 
become emphasized by so much as five minutes of 
talk; yet for this inconsequent meeting she had 
enacted a little part like a fragment in a pantomime 
of Spanish wooing. 

It was not for him—not even to impress him. 
except as a messenger. Alice was herself almost 
unaware of her thought, which was one of the 
running thousands of her thoughts that took no 
deliberate form in words. Nevertheless, she had 
it, and it was the impulse of all her pretty bits of 


ALICE ADAMS $9 


pantomime when she met other acquaintances whe 
made their appreciation visible, as this substantial 
gentleman did. In Alice’s unworded thought, he 
was to be thus encouraged as in some measure @& 
champion to speak well of her to the world; but 
more than this: he was to tell some magnificent 
unknown bachelor how wonderful, how mysterious, 
she was. 

She hastened on gravely, a little stirred reciprocally 
with the supposed stirrings in the breast of that 
shadowy ducal mate, who must be somewhere 
“waiting,’’ or perhaps already seeking her; for she 
more often thought of herself as “‘waiting”’ while he 
sought her; and sometimes this view of things 
became so definite that it shaped into a murmur 
on her lips. ‘Waiting. Just waiting.” And she 
might add, “For him!” Then, being twenty-two, 
she was apt to conclude the mystic interview by 
laughing at herself, though not without a continued 
wistfulness. 

She came to a group of small coloured children 
playing waywardly in a puddle at the mouth of a 
muddy alley; and at sight of her they gave over 
their pastime in order to stare. She smiled bril- 
liantly upon them, but they were too struck with 


40 ALICE ADAMS 


wonder to comprehend that the manifestation was 
friendly; and as Alice picked her way in a little 
detour to keep from the mud, she heard one of them 
say, “Lady got cane! Jeez’!” 

She knew that many coloured children use im- 
pieties familiarly, and she was not startled. She 
was disturbed, however, by an unfavourable hint 
in the speaker’s tone. He was six, probably, but 
the sting of a criticism is not necessarily allayed by 
knowledge of its ignoble source, and Alice had al- 
ready begun to feel a slight uneasiness about her 
eane. Mrs. Dowling’s stare had been strikingly 
projected at it; other women more than merely 
glanced, their brows and lips contracting impulsively; 
and Alice was aware that one or two of them frankly 
halted as soon as she had passed. 

She had seen in several magazines pictures of 
ladies with canes, and on that account she had 
bought this one, never questioning that fashion is 
recognized, even in the provinces, as soon as beheld. 
On the contrary, tnese staring women obviously 
failed to realize that what they were being shown was 
not an eccentric outburst, but the bright harbinger 
of an illustrious mode. Alice had applied a bit of 
artificial pigment to her lips and cheeks before she 


ALICE ADAMS 41 


set forth this morning; she did not need it, having a 
ready colour of her own, which now mounted high 
with annoyance. 

Then a splendidly shining closed black automobile, 
with windows of polished glass, came silently down 
the street toward her. Within it, as in a luxurious 
little apartment, three comely ladies in mourning 
sat and gossiped; but when they saw Alice they 
clutched one another. They instantly recovered, 
bowing to her solemnly as they were borne by, yet 
were not gone from her sight so swiftly but the 
edge of her side glance caught a flash of teeth in 
mouths suddenly opened, and the dark glisten of 
black gloves again clutching to share mirth. 

The colour that outdid the rouge on Alice’s cheek 
extended its area and grew warmer as she realized 
how all too cordial had been her nod and smile to 
these humorous ladies. But in their identity lay 
a significance causing her a sharper smart, for 
they were of the family of that Lamb, chief of 
Lamb and Company, who had employed her father 
since before she was born. 

“And know his salary! They’d be sure to find 
out about that!” was her thought, coupled with 
another bitter one to the effect that they had prob- 


42 ALICE ADAMS 


ably made instantaneous financial estimates of 
what she wore—though certainly her walking-stick 
had most fed their hilarity. 

She tucked it under her arm, not swinging it 
again; and her breath became quick and irregular as 
emotion beset her. She had been enjoying her 
walk, but within the space of the few blocks she had 
gone since she met the substantial gentleman, she 
found that more than the walk was spoiled: sud- 
denly her life seemed to be spoiled, too; though she 
did not view the ruin with complaisance. These 
Lamb women thought her and her cane ridiculous, 
did they? she said to herself. That was their 
parvenu blood: to think because a girl’s father 
worked for their grandfather she had no right to be 
rather striking in style, especially when the striking 
was her style. Probably all the other girls and 
women would agree with them and would laugh at 
her when they got together, and, what might be 
fatal, would try to make all the men think her a silly 
pretender. Men were just like sheep, and nothing 
was easier than for women to set up as shepherds 
and pen them in a fold. “To keep out outsiders,”’ 
Alice thought. “And make ’em believe I am an 
outsider, What’s the use of living?” 


ALICE ADAMS 43 


All seemed lost when a trim young man appeared, 
striding out of a cross-street not far before her, and, 
turning at the corner, came toward her.  Visibly, 
he slackened his gait to lengthen the time of his 
approach, and, as he was a stranger to her, no motive 
could be ascribed to him other than a wish to have a 
longer time to look at her. 

She lifted a pretty hand to a pin at her throat, bit 
her lip—not with the smile, but mysteriously—and 
at the last instant before her shadow touched the 
stranger, let her eyes gravely meet his. A moment 
later, having arrived before the house which was 
her destination, she halted at the entrance to a 
driveway leading through fine lawns to the in- 
tentionally important mau... It was a pleasant 
and impressive place to belWben entering, but Alice 
did not enter at once. She paused, examining a 
tiny bit of mortar which the masons had forgotten to 
scrape from a brick in one of the massive gate-posts. 
She frowned at this tiny defacement, and with an 
air of annoyance scraped it away, using the ferrule 
of her cane—an act of fastidious proprietorship. If 
any one had looked back over his shoulder he would 
not have doubted that she lived there. 

Alice did not turn to see whether anything of the 


44 ALICE ADAMS 


sort happened or not, but she may have surmised 
that it did. At all events, it was with an invigorated 
step that she left the gateway behind her and went 
cheerfully up the drive to the house of her friend 
Mildred. 


dath 
MD. 


CHAPTER IV 


DAMS had a restless morning, and toward 
noon he asked Miss Perry to call his daugh- 
ter; he wished to say something to her. 

“T thought I heard her leaving the house a couple 
of hours ago—maybe longer,” the nurse told him. 
“Tl go see.” And she returned from the brief 
errand, her impression confirmed by information 
from Mrs. Adams. ‘Yes. She went up to Miss 
Mildred Palmer’s to see what she’s going to wear 
to-night.” 

Adams looked at Miss Perry wearily, but remained 
passive, making no inquiries; for he was long ac- 
customed to what seemed to him a kind of jargon 
among ladies, which became the more incomprehen- 
sible when they tried to explain it. A man’s best 
course, he had found, was just to let it go as so much 
sound. His sorrowful eyes followed the nurse as 
she went back to her rocking-chair by the window; 
and her placidity showed him that there was no 


mystery for her in the fact that Alice walked two 
45 


46 ALICE ADAMS 


miles to ask so simple a question when there was a 
telephone in the house. Obviously Miss Perry also 
comprehended why Alice thought it important to 
knew what Mildred meant to wear. Adams under- 
stood why Alice should be concerned with what she 
herself wore—‘“‘to look neat and tidy and at her 
best, why, of course she’d want to,” he thought— 
but he realized that it was forever beyond him to 
understand why the clothing of other people had 
long since become an absorbing part of her life. 

Her excursion this morning was no novelty; she 
was continually going to see what Mildred meant 
to wear, or what some other girl meant to wear; and 
when Alice came home from wherever other girls 
or women had been gathered, she always hurried to 
her mother with earnest descriptions of the clothing 
she had seen. At such times, if Adams was present, 
he might recognize “organdie,” or “taffeta,” or 
“‘ chiffon,” as words defining certain textiles, but the 
rest was too technical for him, and he was like a 
dismal boy at a sermon, just waiting for it to get 
itself finished. Not the least of the mystery was 
his wife’s interest: she was almost indifferent about 
her own clothes, and when she consulted Alice about 
them spoke hurriedly and with an air of apology; 


ALICE ADAMS 47 


but when Alice described other people’s clothes, Mrs. 
Adams listened as eagerly as the daughter talked. 

“There they go!”’ he muttered to-day, a moment 
after he heard the front door closing, a sound recog- 
nizable throughout most of the thinly built house. 
Alice had just returned, and Mrs. Adams called to 
her from the upper hallway, not far from Adams’s 
door 

“What did she say? ”’ 

“She was sort of snippy about it,” Alice returned, 
ascending the stairs. “She gets that way some- 
times, and pretended she hadn’t made up her mind, 
but I’m pretty sure it'll be the maize Georzette with 
Malines flounces.”’ 

*Didn’t you say she wore that at the Pattersons’?”’ 
Mrs. Adams inquired, as Alice arrived at the top of 
the stairs. “And didn’t you tell me she wore it 
again at the——”’ 

“Certainly not,” Alice interrupted, rather petu- 
lantly. “‘She’s never worn it but once, and of course 
she wouldn’t want to wear anything to-nicht that 
people have seen her in a lot.” 

Miss Perry opened the door of Adams’s room and 
stepped out. “Your father wants to know if you'll 
come and see bim a minute. Miss Adams.” 


48 ALICE ADAMS 


“Poor old thing! Of course!’’ Alice exclaimed, 
and went quickly into the room, Miss Perry remain- 
ing outside. “What’s the matter, papa? Getting 
awful sick of lying on his tired old back, I expect.” 

“I’ve had kind of a poor morning,’ Adams said, 
as she patted his hand comfortingly. “I been 
thinking——”’ 

*Didn’t I tell you not to?” she cried, gaily. ‘‘Of 
course you'll have poor times when you go and do 
just. exactly what I say you mustn’t. You stop 
thinking this very minute!”’ 

He smiled ruefully, closing his eyes; was silent for 
a moment, then asked her to sit beside the bed. “I 
been thinking of something I wanted to say,” he 
added. 

What like, papa?”’ 

“Well, it’s nothing—much,” he said, with some- 
thing deprecatory in his tone, as if he felt vague 
impulses toward both humour and apology. “I 
just thought maybe I ought to’ve said more to you 
some time or other about—well, about the way 
things are, down at Lamb and Company’s, for in- 
stance.” 

“Now, papa!”’ She leaned forward in the chair 
she had taken, and pretended to slap his hand 


ALICE ADAMS 49 


crossly. “‘Isn’t that exactly what I said you 
couldn’t think one single think about till you get all 
well?” 

“Well——-”” he said, and went on slowly, not 
looking at her, but at the ceiling. “I just thought 
maybe it wouldn’t been any harm if some time or 
other I told you something about the way they sort 
of depend on me down there.” 

“Why don’t they show it, then?” she asked, 
quickly. ‘“That’s just. what mama and I have 
been feeling so much; they don’t appreciate you.” 

““Why, yes, they do,” he said. “Yes, they do. 
They began h’isting my salary the second year I 
went in there, and they’ve h’isted it a little every 
two years all the time [ve worked for ‘em. I’ve 
been head of the sundries department for seven 
years now, and I could hardly have more authority 
in that department unless I was a member of the 
firm itself.” 

“Well, why don’t they make you a member of the 
firm? That’s what they ought to’ve done! Yes, 
and long ago!” 

Adams laughed, but sighed with more heartiness 
than he had laughed. ‘“‘They call me their ‘oldest 
stand-by’ down there.’”’ He laughed again, apolo- 


50 ALICE ADAMS 


getically, as if to excuse himself for taking a little 
pride in this title. “Yes, sir; they say I’m their 
‘oldest stand-by’; and I guess they know they can 
count on my department’s turning in as good a 
report as they look for, at the end of every month; 
but they don’t have to take a man into the firm to 
get him to do my work, dearie.” 

“But you said they depended on you, papa.” 

“So they do; but of course not so’s they couldn’t 
get along without me.” He paused, reflecting. “I 
don’t just seem to know how to put it—I mean how 
to put what I started out to say. I kind of wanted 
to tell you—well, it seems funny to me, these last 
few years, the way your mother’s taken to feeling 
_ about it. Id like to see a better established whole- 
sale drug business than Lamb and Company this side 
the Alleghanies—I don’t say bigger, I say better 
established—and it’s kind of funny for a man 
that’s been with a business like that as long as I have 
to hear it called a ‘hole.’ It’s kind of funny when 
you think, yourself, you’ve done pretty fairly well 
in a business like that, and the men at the head of 
it seem to think so, too, and put your salary just 
about as high as anybody could consider customary— 
well, what I mean, Alice, it’s kind of funny to have 


ALICE ADAMS 51 


your mother think it’s mostly just—mostly just a . 
failure, so to speak.” 

His voice had become tremulous in spite of him; 
and this sign of weakness and emotion had sufficient 
effect upon Alice. She bent over him suddenly, 
with her arm about him and her cheek against his. 
“Poor papa!” she murmured. “Poor papa!” 

“No, no,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything to 
trouble you. I just thought———” He hesitated. “I 
just wondered—I thought maybe it wouldn’t be 
any harm if I said something about how things are 
down there. I got to thinking maybe you didn’t 
understand it’s a pretty good place. They’re fine 
people to work for; and they’ve always seemed to ~ 
think something of me;—the way they took Walter 
on, for instance, soon as I asked ’em, last year. 
Don’t you think that looked a good deal as if they 
thought something of me, Alice?”’ 

“Yes, papa,”’ she said, not moving. 

“And the work’s right pleasant,” he went on. 
“Mighty nice boys in our department, Alice. Well, 
they are in all the departments, for that matter. 
We have a good deal of fun down there some days.” 

She lifted her head. ‘“‘More than you do at 
home ‘some days,’ I expect, papa!” she said. 


52 ALICE ADAMS 


He protested feebly. “Now, I didn’t mean that— 
I didn’t want to trouble you us 

She looked at him through winking eyelashes. 
“Tm sorry I called it a ‘hole,’ papa.” 





“No, no,” he protested, gently. “It was your 
mother said that.” 

“No. I did, too.” 

“Well, if you did, it was only because you’d heard 
her.” . 

She shook her head, then kissed him. “I’m going 
to talk to her,” she said, and rose decisively. 

But at this, her father’s troubled voice became 
quickly louder: ‘You better let her alone. I just 
wanted to have a little talk with you. I didn’t 
mean to start any—your mother won’t——”’ 

“Now, papa!” Alice spoke cheerfully again, and 
smiled upon him. “I want you to quit worrying! 
Everything’s going to be all right and nobody’s going 
to bother you any more about anything. You’ll see!” 

She carried her smile out into the hall, but after 
she had closed the door her face was all pity; and her 
mother, waiting for her in the opposite room, spoke 
sympathetically. 

““What’s the matter, Alice? What did he say 


that’s upset you?” 


ALICE ADAMS 53 


“Wait a minute, mama.” Alice found a handker- 
chief, used it for eyes and suffused nose, gulped, then 
suddenly and desolately sat upon the bed. “Poor, 
poor, poor papa!” she whispered. 

“Why?” Mrs. Adams inquired, mildly. “‘ What’s 
the matter with him? Sometimes you act as if he 
weren’t getting well. What’s he been talking 
about?” 

““Mama—well, I think I’m pretty selfish. Oh, I 
do!” 

‘Did he say you were?” 

“Papa? No, indeed! What I mean is, maybe 
we're both a little selfish to try to make him go out 
and hunt around for something new.” 

Mrs. Adams looked thoughtful. “Oh, that’s 
what he was up to!” 

“Mama, I think we ought to give it up. I didn’t 
dream it had really hurt him.” 

“Well, doesn’t he hurt us?’’ 

“Never that I know of, mama.” 

“T don’t mean by saying things,” Mrs. Adams 
explained, impatiently. ‘“‘ There are more ways than 
that of hurting people. When a man sticks to a 
salary that doesn’t provide for his family, isn’t that 
hurting them?” 


54 ALICE ADAMS 


“Oh, it ‘provides’ for us well enough, mama. We 
have what we need—if I weren’t so extravagant. 
Oh, J know I am!” 

But at this admission her mother cried out sharply. 
Extravagant!’ You haven’t one tenth of what 
the other girls you go with have. And you can’t. 
have what you ought to as long as he doesn’t get out 
of that horrible place. It provides bare food and 
shelter for us, but what’s that?’’ 

“IT don’t think we ought to try any more to 
change him.” 

‘You don’t?”’ Mrs. Adams came and stood before 
her. ‘Listen, Alice: your father’s asleep; that’s 
his trouble, and he’s got to be waked up. He 
doesn’t know that things have changed. When you 
and Walter were little children we did have enough— 
at least it seemed to be about as much as most of the 
people we knew. But the town isn’t what it was 
in those days, and times aren’t what they were then, 
and these fearful prices aren’t the old prices. Every- 
thing else but your father has changed, and all the 
time he’s stood still.” He doesn’t know it; he thinks 
because they’ve given him a hundred dollars more 
every two years he’s quite a prosperous man! And 
he thinks that because his children cost him more 


ALICE ADAMS 55 


than he and I cost our parents he gives them— 
enough!” 
“But Walter * Alice faltered. “‘ Walter doesn’t 


cost him anything at all any more.’ And she 





concluded, in a stricken voice, “It’s all—me!”’ 

“Why shouldn’t it be?”’ her mother cried. ‘‘ You’re 
young—you’re just at the time when your life should 
be fullest of good things and happiness. Yet what 
do you get?”’ 

Alice’s lip quivered; she was not unsusceptible to 
such an appeal, but she contrived the semblance of a 
protest. ‘I don’t have such a bad time—not a good 
deal of the time, anyhow. Ive got a good many of 
the things other girls have——”’ 

“You have?’’ Mrs. Adams was piteously satirical. 
“I suppose you’ve got a limousine to go to that 
dance to-night? I suppose you’ve only got to call a 
florist and tell him to send you some orchids? I 
suppose you’ ve——”’ 

But Alice interrupted this jist. Apparently in a 
single instant all emotion left her, and she became 
businesslike, as one in the midst of trifles reminded 
of really serious matters. She got up from the bed 
and went to the door of the closet where she kept her 
dresses. “‘Oh. see here,” she said, briskly. “I’ve 


56 ALICE ADAMS 


decided to wear my white organdie if you could put 
in a new lining for me. I’m afraid it'll take you 
nearly all afternoon.”’ 

She brought forth the dress, displayed it upon the 
bed, and Mrs. Adams examined it attentively. 

“Do you think you could get it done, mama?” 

“IT don’t see why not,” Mrs. Adams answered, 
passing a thoughtful hand over the fabric. “It 
oughtn’t to take more than four or five hours.” 

‘It’s a shame to have you sit at the machine that 
long,” Alice said, absently, adding, “‘And I’m sure we 
ought to let papa alone. Let’s just give it up, 
mama.” 

Mrs. Adams continued her thoughtful examina- 
tion of the dress. ‘Did you buy the chiffon and 
ribbon, Alice?” 

“Yes. I’m sure we oughtn’t to talk to him 
about it any more, mama.” 

“Well, we'll see.” 

“‘Let’s both agree that we'll never say another 
single word to him about it,” said Alice. “It'll be a 
great deal better if we just let him make up bis 
mind for himself.” 


CHAPTER V 


ITH this, having more immediately prac- 
tical questions before them, they dropped 
the subject, to bend their entire attention 





pon the dress; and when the lunch-gong sounded 
ownstairs Alice was still sketching repairs and 
terations. She continued to sketch them, not 
eeding the summons. 

“IT suppose we’d better go down to lunch,” Mrs. 
‘Adams said, absently. “She’s at the gong again.” 


be 





Ina minute, mama. Now about the sleeves 
And she went on with her planning. Unfortunately 
ithe gong was inexpressive of the mood of the person 
who beat upon it. It consisted of three little metal 









bowls upon a string; they were unequal in size, and, 
upon being tapped with a padded stick, gave forth 
vibrations almost musically pleasant. It was Alice 
rwho had substituted this contrivance for the brass 
* dinner-bell”’ in use throughout her childhood; and 





either she nor the others of her family realized 


t the substitution of sweeter sounds had made 
57 


58 ALICE ADAMS 


the life of that household more difficult. In spite 
of dismaying increases in wages, the Adamses still 
strove to keep a cook; and, as they were unable to 
pay the higher rates demanded by a gocd one, what 
they usually had was a whimsical coloured woman 
of nomadic impulses. In the hands of such a 
person the old-fashioned “dinner-bell” was satisfy- 
ing; life could instantly be made intolerable for any 
one dawdling on his way to a meal; the bell was 
capable of every desirable profanity and left nothing 
bottled up in the breast of the ringer. But the 
chamois-covered stick might whack upon Alice’s 
little Chinese bowls for a considerable length of 
time and produce no great effect of urgency upon a 
hearer, nor any other effect, except fury in the cook. 
The ironical impossibility of expressing indignation 
otherwise than by sounds of gentle harmony proved 
exasperating; the cook was apt to become surcharged, 
so that explosive resignations, never rare, were some- 
what more frequent after the introduction of the 
gong. 

Mrs. Adams took this increased frequency to be 
only another manifestation of the inexplicable new 
difficulties that beset all housekeeping. You paid 
a cook double what you had paid one a few years be-« 


ALICE ADAMS 59 


fore; and the cook knew half as much of cookery, 
and had no gratitude. The more you gave these 
people, it seemed, the worse they behaved—a con- 
dition not to be remedied by simply giving them 
less, because you couldn’t even get the worst unless 
you paid her what she demanded. Nevertheless, 
Mrs. Adams remained fitfully an optimist in the 
matter. Brought up by her mother to speak of a 
female cook as “the girl,’’ she had been instructed 
by Alice to drop that definition in favour of one not 
an improvement in accuracy: “the maid.” Almost 
always, during the first day or so after every cook 
came, Mrs. Adams would say, at intervals, with an 
air of triumph: “I believe—of course it’s a little 
soon to be sure—but I do really believe this new 
maid is the treasure we’ve been looking for so long!” 
Much in the same way that Alice dreamed cf a 
mysterious perfect mate for whom she “waited,” her 
mother had a fairy theory that hidden somewhere 
in the universe there was the treasure, the perfect 
*‘maid,’’ who would come and cook in the Adamses’ 
kitchen, not four days or four weeks, but forever. 
The present incumbent was not she. Alice, 
profoundly interested herself, kept her mother like- 
wise so preoccupied with the dress that they were 


60 ALICE ADAMS 


but vaguely conscious of the gong’s soft warnings, 
though these were repeated and protracted unusually. 
Finally the sound of a hearty voice, independent and 
enraged, reached the pair. It came from the hall 
below. 

“TI says goo’-bye!”’ it called. ‘‘Da’ss all!” 

Then the front door slammed. 

“Why, what ” Mrs. Adams began. 

They went down hurriedly to find out. Miss 





Perry informed them. 

“I couldn’t make her listen to reason,” she said. 
“She rang the gong four or five times and got to 
talking to herself; and then she went up to her room 
and packed her bag. I told her she had no business 
to go out the front door, anyhow.” 

Mrs. Adams took the news philosophically. “I 
thought she had something like that in her eye when 
I paid her this morning, and I’m not surprised. 
Well, we won’t let Mr. Adams know anything’s the 
matter till I get a new one.” 

They lunched upon what the late incumbent had 
left. chilling on the table, and then Mrs. Adams 
prepared to wash the dishes; she would “have 
them done in a jiffy,” she said, cheerfully. But it 
was Alice who washed the dishes. 


ALICE ADAMS 61 


“T don’t like to have you do that, Alice,” her 
mother protested, following her into the kitchen. 
“Tt roughens the hands, and when a girl has hands 





like yours 

“T know, mama.” Alice looked troubled, but 
shook her head. ‘“‘It can’t be helped this time; 
you'll need every minute to get that dress done.” 

Mrs. Adams went away lamenting, while Alice, no 
expert, began to splash the plates and cups and 
saucers in the warm water. After a while, as she 
worked, her eyes grew dreamy: she was making 
little gay-coloured pictures of herself, unfounded 
prophecies of how she would look and what would 
happen to her that evening. She saw herself, 
charming and demure, wearing a fluffy idealization 
of the dress her mother now determinedly struggled 
with upstairs; she saw herself framed in a garlanded 
archway, the entrance to a ballroom, and saw the 
people on the shining floor turning dramatically to 
look at her; then from all points a rush of young. 
men shouting for dances with her; and she 
constructed a superb stranger, tall, dark, masterfully 
‘smiling, who swung her out of the clamouring group 
as the music began. She saw herself dancing with 
him, saw the half-troubled smile she would give 


62 ALICE ADAMS 


him; and she accurately smiled that smile as she 
rinsed the knives and forks. 

These hopeful fragments of drama were not to be 
realized, she knew; but she played that they were 
true, and went on creating them. In all of them she 
wore or carried flowers—her mother’s sorrow: for 
her in this detail but made it the more important— 
and she saw herself glamorous with orchids; dis- 
carded these for an armful of long-stemmed, heavy 
roses; tossed them away for a great bouquet of 
white camellias; and so wandered down a lengthening 
hothouse gallery of floral beauty, all costly and be- 
yond her reach except in such a wistful day-dream. 
And upon her present whole horizon, though she 
searched it earnestly, she could discover no figure of 
a sender of flowers. 

Out of her fancies the desire for flowers to wear 
that night emerged definitely and became poignant; 
she began to feel that it might be particularly im- 
-portant to have them. ‘“‘This might be the night!” 
She was still at the age to dream that the night of 
any dance may be the vital point in destiny. No 
matter how commonplace or disappointing other 
dance nights have been this one may bring the great 
meeting. The unknown magnifico may be there. 


ALICE ADAMS 63 


Alice was almost unaware of her own reveries in 
which this being appeared—reveries often so transi- 
tory that they developed and passed in a few seconds. 
And in some of them the being was not wholly a 
stranger; there were moments when he seemed to be 
composed of recognizable fragments of young men 
she knew—a smile she had liked, from one; the 
figure of another, the hair of another—and some- 
_ times she thought he might be concealed, so to say, 
within the person of an actual acquaintance, some- 
one she had never suspected of being the right 
seeker for her, someone who had never suspected 
that it was she who “waited” for him. Anything 
might reveal them to each other: a look, a turn of 
the head, a singular word—perhaps some flowers 
upon her breast or in her hand. 

She wiped the dishes slowly, concluding the 
operation by dropping a saucer upon the floor and 
dreamily sweeping the fragments under the stove. 
She sighed and replaced the broom near a window, 
letting her glance wander over the small yard outside. 
The grass, repulsively besooted to the colour of 
coal-smoke all winter, had lately come to life 
again and now sparkled with green, in the midst of 
which a tiny shot of blue suddenly fixed her absent 


64 ALICE ADAMS 


eyes. They remained upon it for several moments, 
becoming less absent. 

It was a violet. 

Alice ran upstairs, put on her hat, went outdoors 
and began to search out the violets. She found 
twenty-two, a bright omen—since the number was 
that of her years—but not enough violets. There 
were no more; she had ransacked every foot of the 
yard. 

She looked dubiously at the little bunch in her 
hand, glanced at the lawn next door, which offered 
no favourable prospect; then went thoughtfully into 
the house, left her twenty-two violets in a bowl of 
water, and came quickly out again, her brow marked 
with a frown of decision. She went to a trolley-line 
and took a car to the outskirts of the city where 
a new park had been opened. 

Here she resumed her search, but it was not an 
easily rewarded one, and for an hour after her 
arrival she found no violets. She walked conscien- 
tiously over the whole stretch of meadow, her eyes 
roving discontentedly; there was never a blue dot in 
the groomed expanse; but at last, as she came near 
the borders of an old grove of trees, left untouched 
by the municipal landscapers, the little flowers 


ALICE ADAMS 65 


appeared, and she began to gather them. She 
picked them carefully, loosening the earth round 
each tiny plant, so as to bring the roots up with it, 
that it might live the longer; and she had brought a 
napkin, which she drenched at a hydrant, and kept 
loosely wrapped about the stems of her collection. 

The turf was too damp for her to kneel; she worked 
patiently, stooping from the waist; and when she 
got home in a drizzle of rain at five o’clock her 
knees were tremulous with strain, her back ached, 
and she was tired all over, but she had three hundred 
violets. Her mother moaned when Alice showed 
them to her, fragrant in a basin of water. 

“Oh, you poor child! To think of your having to 
work so hard to get things that other girls only need. 
lift their little fingers for!” 

“Never mind,” said Alice, huskily. “Ive got 
*em and I am going to have a good time to-night!” 

“You've just got to!’? Mrs. Adams agreed, in- 
tensely sympathetic. “The Lord knows you de- 
serve to, after picking all these violets, poor thing, 
and He wouldn’t be mean enough to keep you from 
it. I may have to get dinner before I finish the 
dress, but I can get it done in a few minutes after- 
ward, and it’s going to look right pretty. Don’t yeu 


66 ALICE ADAMS 


worry about that! And with all these lovely vio. 
lets——”” 3 

“I wonder——”’ Alice began, paused, then went 
on, fragmentarily: “I suppose—well, I wonder—do 
you suppose it would have been better policy to 
have told Walter before——” 

“No,” said her mother. “It would only have 
given him longer to grumble.” 

“But he might ia 

“Don’t worry,” Mrs. Adams reassured her. 
“He'll be a little cross, but he won't be stubborn; 
just let me talk to him and don’t you say anything 





at all, no matter what he says.” 

These references to Walter concerned some neces- 
sary manoeuvres which took place at dinner, and 
were conducted by the mother, Alice having accepted 
her advice to sit in silence. Mrs. Adams began by 
laughing cheerfully. “I wonder how much longer it 
took me to cook this dinner than it does Walter to 
eat it?” she said. ‘“‘Don’t gobble, child! There’s 
no hurry.” 

In contact with his own family Walter was no 
squanderer of words. “Is for me,” he said. “Got 
date.”’ 

“TI know you have, but there’s plenty of time.” 


ALICE ADAMS 67 


He smiled in benevolent pity. “You know, do 
you? If you made any coffee—don’t bother if you 
didn’t. Get some down-town.” He seemed about 
to rise and depart; whereupon Alice, biting her 
lip, sent a panic-stricken glance at her mother. 

But Mrs. Adams seemed not at all disturbed; and 
laughed again. ‘‘Why, what nonsense, Walter! I'll 
bring your coffee in a few minutes, but we’re going 
to have dessert first.” 

““What sort?” 

“Some lovely peaches.” 

‘Doe’ want *ny canned peaches,” said the frank 
Walter, moving back his chair. “G’-night.” 

“Walter! It doesn’t begin till about nine oe’clock 
at the earliest.” 

He paused, mystified. “What doesn’t?” - 

“The dance.” 

* What dance?”’ 

“Why, Mildred Palmer’s dance, of course.” 

Walter laughed briefly. “What’s that to me?” 

“Why, you haven’t forgotten it’s to-nighi, have 
you?” Mrs. Adams cried. “What a boy!” 

“TI told you a week ago I wasn’t going to that 
ole dance,” he returned, frowning. “Yeu heard 


> 


me, 


68 ALICE ADAMS 


“Walter!” she exclaimed. ‘“‘Of course you’re going. 
I got your clothes all out this afternoon, and brushed 





them for you. They’ll look very nice, and em 

“They won’t look nice on me,” he interrupted. 
“Got date down-town, I tell you.” 

“But of course you’ll——” 

“See here!”’ Walter said, decisively. “‘Don’t get 
any wrong ideas in your head. I’m just as liable to 
go up to that ole dance at the Palmers’ as I am to eat 
a couple of barrels of broken glass.” 

“But, Walter es 


Walter was beginning to be seriously annoyed. 





“Don’t ‘Walter? me! Tm no s’ciety snake. I 
wouldn’t jazz with that Palmer crowd if they 
coaxed me with diamonds.” 

“Walter fs 

**Didn’t I tell you it’s no use to ‘Walter’ me?”’ he 
demanded. 

“My dear child——”’ 

“Oh, Glory!” 

At this Mrs. Adams abandoned her air of amuse- 
ment, looked hurt, and glanced at the demure Miss 
Perry across the table. “I’m afraid Miss Perry 
won’t think you have very good manners, Walter.” 

“You're right she won’t,” he agreed, grimly- 





’ 


ALICE ADAMS 69 
“Not if I haf to hear any more about me goin’ 


to——” 

But his mother interrupted him with some as- 
perity: “It seems very strange that you always 
object to going anywhere among our friends, 
Walter.” 

*‘Your friends!” he said, and, rising from his 
chair, gave utterance to an ironical laugh strictly 
monosyllabic. “Your friends!” he repeated, going 
to the door. “Oh, yes! Certainly! Good-night !” 

And looking back over his shoulder to offer a 
final brief view of his derisive face, he took himself 


out of the room. 





Alice gasped: “‘Mama . 

“Tl stop him!” her mother responded, sharply; 
and hurried after the truant, catching him at the 
front door with his hat and raincoat on. 

““Walter——”’ 

“Told you had a date down-town,” he said, 
gruffly; and would have opened the door, but she 
caught his arm and detained him. 

“Walter, please come back and finish your dinner. 
When I take all the trouble to cook it for you, I 
think you might at least * 

“Now, now!” he said. “That isn’t what you’re 





70 ALICE ADAMS 


up to. You don’t want to make me eat; you want 
to make me listen.” 
“Well, you must listen 


1°? 


She retained her grasp 
upon his arm, and made it tighter. ‘“‘ Walter, 
please!” she entreated, her voice becoming tremu- 
lous. “Please don’t make me so much trouble!”’ 

He drew back from her as far as her hold upon 
him. permitted, and looked at her sharply. “Look 
here!” he said. “I geé you, all right! What’s the 
matter of Alice goin’ to that party by herself?” 

“*She just can’t!” 

Why not?”’ 

“It makes things too mean for her, Walter. All 
the other girls have somebody to depend on after 
they get there.” 

“Well, why doesn’t she have somebody?” he 
asked, testily. ‘“‘Somebody besides me, I mean! 
Why hasn’t somebody asked her to go? She ought 
to be that popular, anyhow, I sh’d think—she fries 
enough!” 

“IT don’t understand how you can be so hard,” 
his mother wailed, huskily. ‘“‘ You know why they 
don’t run after her the way they do the other girls 
, she goes with, Walter. It’s because we’re poor, 
and she hasn’t got any background.” 


ALICE ADAMS v1 


**“Background?’” Walter repeated. “‘Back- 
ground?’ What kind of talk is that?” 

“You wil go with her to-night, Walter?” his 
mother pleaded, not stopping to enlighten him. 
“You don’t understand how hard things are for her 
and how brave she is about them, or you couldn’t 
be so selfish! It'd be more than I can bear to see 
her disappointed to-night! She went clear out to 
Belleview Park this afternoon, Walter, and spent 
hours and hours picking violets to wear. You 
will——”” 

Walter’s heart was not iron, and the episode of the 
violets may have reached it. “Oh, blub!”’ he said, 
and flung his soft hat violently at the wall. 

His mother beamed with delight. “Thafs a 
good boy, darling! You’ll never be sorry you 5 

“Cut it out,” he requested. ‘“‘If I take her, will 
you pay for a taxi?” 

“Oh, Walter!” And again Mrs. Adams showed 
distress. “‘Couldn’t you?” 

“No, I couldn’t; I’m not goin’ to throw away my 
good money like that, and you can’t tell what time 
o night it’ll be before she’s willin’ to come home. 





What’s the matter you payin’ for one?” 
“T haven’t any money.” 


72 ALICE ADAMS 


“Well, father——”’ 

She shook her head dolefully. ‘“‘I got some from 
him this morning, and I can’t bother him for any 
more; it upsets him. He’s always been so terribly 


33 





close with money 

*“I guess he couldn’t help that,” Walter observed. 
“We're liable to go to the poorhouse the way it is. 
Well, what’s the matter our walkin’ to this rotten 
party?” 

“In the rain, Walter?” 

“Well, it’s only a drizzle and we can take a street- 
car to within a block of the house.” 

Again his mother shook her head. ‘“‘It wouldn’t 
do.” 

“Well, darn the luck, all right!’ he consented, 
explosively. “I'll get her something to ride in. It 
means seventy-five cents.” 

“Why, Walter!”’ Mrs. Adams cried, much pleased. 
*Do you know how to get a cab for that little? How 
splendid!” 

“Tain’t a cab,’? Walter informed her crossly. 
**It’s a tin Lizzie, but you don’t haf’ to tell her what 
it is till I get her into it, do you?” 

Mrs. Adams agreed that she didn’t. 


CHAPTER VI 


LICE was busy with herself for two hours 
A after dinner; but a little before nine o’clock 
she stood in front of her long mirror, com- 
pleted, bright-eyed and solemn. Her hair, ex- 
quisitely arranged, gave all she asked of it; what 
artificialities in colour she had used upon her face 
were only bits of emphasis that made her prettiness 
the more distinct; and the dress, not rumpled by 
her mother’s careful hours of work, was a white 
cloud of loveliness. Finally there were two trium- 
phant bouquets of violets, each with the stems 
wrapped in tin-foil shrouded by a bow of purple 
chiffon; and one bouquet she wore at her waist and 
the other she carried in her hand. 

Miss Perry, called in by a rapturous mother for 
the free treat of a look at this radiance, insisted that 
Alice was a vision. “Purely and simply a vision!” 
she said, meaning that no other definition whatever 
would satisfy her. “‘I never saw anybody look 


a vision if she don’t look one to-night,” the admiring 
73 


74 ALICE ADAMS 


nurse declared. “Her papa’ll think the same I do 
about it. You see if he doesn’t say she’s purely and 
simply a vision.” 

Adams did not fulfil the prediction quite literally 
when Alice paid a brief visit to his room to “show” 
him and bid him good-night; but he chuckled feebly. 
“Well, well, well!” he said. “You look mighty 
fine—mighty fine!” And he waggled a bony finger 
at her two bouquets. “Why, Alice, who’s your 
beau?” } 

““Never you mind!” she laughed, archly brushing 
his nose with the violets in her hand. ‘He treats 
me pretty well, doesn’t he?” 

“Must like to throw his money around! These 
violets smell mighty sweet, and they ought to, if 
they’re going to a party with you. Have a good 
time, dearie.” 

“I mean to!” she cried; and she repeated this 
gaily, but with an emphasis expressing sharp deter- 
mination as she left him. “I mean to!” 

“What was he talking about?” her mother in- 
quired, smoothing the rather worn and old evening 
wrap she had placed on Alice’s bed. “What were 
you telling him you ‘mean to?’” 

Alice went back to her triple mirror for the last 


ALICE ADAMS 75 
time, then stood before the long one. “That I 


mean to have a good time to-night,” she said; and 
as she turned from her reflection to the wrap Mrs. 
Adams held up for her, “It looks as though I could, 
don’t you think so?” 

“You'll just be a queen to-night,” her mother 
whispered in fond emotion. “‘You mustn’t doubt 
yourself.” 

‘**Well, there’s one thing,” said Alice. “I think 
I do look nice enough to get along without having 
to dance with that Frank Dowling! All I ask 
is for it to happen just once; and if he comes near 
me to-night I’m going to treat him the way the 
other girls do. Do you suppose Walter’s got the 
taxi out in front?” 

*‘He—he’s waiting down in the hall,”’ Mrs. Adams 
answered, nervously; and she held up another. 
garment to go over the wrap. 

Alice frowned at it. ‘“‘What’s that, mama?” 

*It’s—it’s your father’s raincoat. I thought 


93 





you'd put it on over 
“But I won’t need it in a taxicab.” 
“You will to get in and out, and you needn’t take 
it into the Palmers’. You can leave it in the—in the 


It’s drizzling, and you'll need it.” . 





76 ALICE ADAMS 


“Oh, well,’’ Alice consented; and a few minutes 
later, as with Walter’s assistance she climbed into 
the vehicle he had provided, she better understood 
her mother’s solicitude. 

“What on earth zs this, Walter?” she asked. 

“Never mind; it'll keep you dry enough with the 
top up,” he returned, taking his seat beside her. 
Then for a time, as they went rather jerkily up the 
street, she was silent; but finally she repeated her 
question: “What zs it, Walter?” 

*“What’s what?” 

*“This—this car ?”’ 

**It’s a ottomobile.” 

“*T mean—what kind is it?” 

**Haven’t you got eyes?” 

**It’s too dark.” 

“It’s a second-hand tin Lizzie,” said Walter. 
*“D’you know what that means? It means a 
flivver.” 

“Yes, Walter.” 

“Got ’ny "bjections?” 

“Why, no, dear,” she said, placatively. “Is it 
yours, Walter? Have you bought it?” 

“Me?” he laughed. “J couldn’t buy a used 
wheelbarrow. I rent this sometimes when I’m 


ALICE ADAMS 77 


goin’ out among ’em. Costs me seventy-five cents 
and the price o’ the gas.” 

*“That seems very moderate.” 

“TI guess it is! The feller owes me some money, 
and this is the only way Id ever get it off him.” 

“Ts he a garage-keeper?”’ 

“Not exactly!’ Walter uttered husky sounds 
of amusement. “‘You’ll be just as happy, I guess, 
if you don’t know who he is,” he said. 

His tone misgave her; and she said truthfully 
that she was content not to know who owned the 
ear. “I joke sometimes about how you keep things 
‘to yourself,’ she added, “but I really never do 
pry in your affairs, Walter.” 

“Oh, no, you don’t!” 

“Indeed, I don’t.” 

“Yes, you’re mighty nice and cooing when you 
got me where you want me,” he jeered. ‘Well, J 
just as soon tell you where I get this car.” 

“T’d just as soon you wouldn’t, Walter,” she 
said, hurriedly. “Please don’t.” 

But Walter meant to tell her. “Why, there’s 
nothin’ exactly criminal about it,” he said. “It 
belongs to old J. A. Lamb himself. He keeps it 
for their coon chauffeur. I rent it from him.” 


78 ALICE ADAMS 
“From Mr. Lamb ?” 


**No; from the coon chauffeur.” 

“Walter!” she gasped. 

“Sure I do! I can get it any night when the 
coon isn’t goin’ to use it himself. He’s drivin’ their 
limousine to-night—that little Henrietta Lamb’s 
goin’ to the party, no matter if her father has only 
been dead less’n a year!” He paused, then in- 
quired: “‘ Well, how d’you like it?” 

She did not speak, and he began to be remorseful 
for having imparted so much information, though 
his way of expressing regret was his own. “Well, 
you will make the folks make me take you to par- 
ties!” he said. “I got to do it the best way I can, 
don’t I?”’ 

Then as she made no response, “Oh, the car’s 
clean enough,” he said. “This coon, he’s as partic- 
ular as any white man; you needn’t worry about 
that.”” And as she still said nothing, he added 
gruffly, “I’d of had a better car if I could afforded 
it. You needn’t get so upset about it.” 

“T don’t understand—” she said in a low voice— 
**T don’t understand how you know such people.” 

“Such people as who?” 

**As—coloured chauffeurs.” 


ALICE ADAMS 79 
“Oh, look here, now!” he protested, loudly. 


“Don’t you know this is a democratic country?” 
“Not quite that democratic, is it, Walter?” 
“The trouble with you,” he retorted, “you don’t 

know there’s anybody in town except just this 

silk-shirt crowd.” He paused, seeming to await a 

refutation; but as none came, he expressed himself 

definitely: ‘They make me sick.” 

They were coming near their destination, and the 
glow of the big, brightly lighted house was seen 
before them in the wet night. Other cars, not 
like theirs, were approaching this center of brilliance; 
long triangles of light near the ground swept through 
the fine drizzle; small red tail-lights gleamed again 
from the moist pavement of the street; and, through 
the myriads of little glistening leaves along the 
curving driveway, glimpses were caught of lively 
colours moving in a white glare as the limousines 
released their occupants under the shelter of the 
porte-cochére. 

Alice clutched Walter’s arm in a panic; they were 
just at the driveway entrance. “Walter, we mustn’t 
go in there.” 

*What’s the matter?” 

“Leave this awful car outside.” 


80 ALICE ADAMS 
«é Why, I bP 


“Stop!” she insisted, vehemently. “‘You’ve got 
to! Go back!” 

“Oh, Glory!” 

The little car was between the entrance posts; 
but Walter backed it out, avoiding a collision with 
an impressive machine which swerved away from 
them and passed on toward the porte-cochére, 
showing a man’s face grinning at the window as it 


went by. ‘“Flivver runabout got the wrong num- 
ber!” he said. 

“Did he see us?” Alice cried. 

*“Did who see us?” 

““Harvey Malone—in that foreign coupé.” 

*“No; he couldn’t tell who we were under this top,” 
Walter assured her as he brought the little car to a 
standstill beside the curbstone, out in the street. 
*What’s it matter if he did, the big fish?”’ 

Alice responded with a loud sigh, and sat still. 

““Well, want to go on back?” Walter inquired. 
“You bet I’m willing!” 

**No.” 

“Well, then, what’s the matter our drivin’ on up 
to the porte-cochére? ‘There’s room for me to park 
just the other side of it.” 


ALICE ADAMS 81 


“No, no!” 

“What you expect todo? Sit here all night?” 

*“No, leave the car here.”’ 

“IT don’t care where we leave it,” he said. ‘“‘Sit 
still till I lock her, so none o’ these millionaires around 
here’ll run off with her.” He got out with a padlock 
and chain; and, having put these in place, offered 
Alice his hand. ‘‘Come on, if you’re ready.” 

“Wait,” she said, and, divesting herself of the 
raincoat, handed it to Walter. “Please leave this 
with your things in the men’s dressing-room, as if it 
were an extra one of your own, Walter.” 

He nodded; she jumped out; and they scurried 
through the drizzle. As they reached the porte- 
cochére she began to laugh airily, and spoke to the 
impassive man in livery who stood there. “Joke on 
us!” she said, hurrying by him toward the door of the 
house. “Our car broke down outside the gate.” 

The man remained impassive, though he responded 
with a faint gleam as Walter, looking back at him, 
produced for his benefit a cynical distortion of 
countenance which offered little confirmation of 
Alice’s account of things. Then the door was 
swiftly opened to the brother and sister; and they 
came into a marble-floored hall, where a dozen 


82 ALICE ADAMS 


sleeked young men lounged, smoked cigarettes and 
fastened their gloves, as they waited for their ladies. 
Alice nodded to one or another of these, and went 
quickly on, her face uplifted and smiling; but Walter 
detained her at the door to which she hastened. 
*“‘Listen here,” he said. “I suppose you want me 


39 





to dance the first dance with you 

“If you please, Walter,” she said, meekly. 

*“How long you goin’ to hang around fixin’ up in 
that dressin’-room?”’ 

“Tl be out before you’re ready yourself,’ she 
promised him; and kept her word, she was so eager 
for her good time to begin. When he came for her, 
they went down the hall to a corridor opening upon 
three great rooms which had been thrown open to- 
gether, with the furniture removed and the broad 
floors waxed. At one end of the corridor musicians 
sat in a green grove, and Walter, with some interest, 
turned toward these; but his sister, pressing his arm, 
impelled him in the opposite direction. 

‘“‘What’s the matter now?” he asked. ‘That’s 
Jazz Louie and his half-breed bunch—three white and 
four mulatto. Let’s——?” 

“No, no,’ she whispered. “We must speak to 
Mildred and Mr. and Mrs. Palmer.” 


ALICE ADAMS 83 


‘Speak’ to ’em? I haven’t got a thing te say to 
those berries!” 

“Walter, won’t you please behave?” 

He seemed to consent, for the moment, at least, 
and suffered her to take him down the corridor 
toward a floral bower where the hostess stood with her 
father and mother. Other couples and groups were 
moving in the same direction, carrying with them a 
hubbub of laughter and fragmentary chatterings; and 
Alice, smiling all the time, greeted people on every 
side of her eagerly—a little more eagerly than most 
of them responded—while Walter nodded in a non- 
committal manner to one or two, said nothing, and 
yawned audibly, the last resource of a person who 
finds himself nervous in a false situation. He re- 
peated his yawn and was beginning another when 
a convulsive pressure upon his arm made him under- 
stand that he must abandon this method of reassuring 
himself. They were close upon the floral bower. 

Mildred was giving her hand to one and another 
of her guests as rapidly as she could, passing them on 
to her father and mother, and at the same time 
resisting the efforts of three or four detached bache- 
lors who besought her to give over her duty in favour 
of the dance-music just beginning to blare. 


84 ALICE ADAMS 


She was a large, fair girl, with a kindness of eye 
somewhat withheld by an expression of fastidious- 
ness; at first sight of her it was clear that she would 
never in her life do anything “‘incorrect,” or wear 
anything “incorrect.” But her correctness was of 
the finer sort, and had no air of being studied or 
achieved; conduct would never offer her a problem to 
be settled from a book of rules, for the rules were so 
deep within her that she was unconscious of them. 
And behind this perfection there was an even ampler 
perfection of what Mrs. Adams called “background.” 
The big, rich, simple house was part of it, and Mil- 
dred’s father and mother were part of it. They stood 
beside her, large, serene people, murmuring graciously 
and gently inclining their handsome heads as they 
gave their hands to the guests; and even the youngest 
and most ebullient of these took on a hushed manner- 
liness with a closer approach to the bower. 

When the opportunity came for Alice and Walter 
to pass within this precinct, Alice, going first, leaned 
forward and whispered in Mildred’s ear. ‘You 
didn’t wear the maize georgette! That’s what I 
thought you were going to. But you look simply 
darling! And those pearls——”’ 

Dthers were crowding decorously forward, anxious 


ALICE ADAMS 85 


to be done with ceremony and get to the dancing; and 
Mildred did not prolong the intimacy of Alice’s 
enthusiastic whispering. With a faint accession of 
colour and a smile tending somewhat in the direction 
of rigidity, she carried Alice’s hand immediately on- 
ward to Mrs. Palmer’s. Alice’s own colour showed a 
little heightening as she accepted the suggestion thus 
implied; nor was that emotional tint in any wise de- 
creased, a moment later, by an impression that 
Walter, in concluding the brief exchange of courte- 
sies between himself and the stately Mr. Palmer, had 
again reassured himself with a yawn. 

But she did not speak of it to Walter; she pre- 
ferred not to confirm the impression and to leave in 
her mind a possible doubt that he had done it. He 
followed her out upon the waxed floor, said resignedly : 
“Well, come on,”’ put his arm about her, and they 
began to dance. 

Alice danced gracefully and well, but not so well as 
Walter. Of all the steps and runs, of all the whimsi- 
cal turns and twirlings, of all the rhythmic swayings 
and dips commanded that season by such blarings 
as were the barbaric product, loud and wild, of the 
Jazz Louies and their half-breed bunches, the thin 
and sallow youth was a master. Upon his face 


86 ALICE ADAMS 


could be seen contempt of the easy marvels he per- 
formed as he moved in swift precision from one 
smooth agility to another; and if some too-dainty 
or jealous cavalier complained that to be so much a 
stylist in dancing was “‘not quite like a gentleman,” 
at least Walter’s style was what the music called 
for. No other dancer in the room could be thought 
comparable to him. Alice told him so. 

**Tt’s wonderful!” she said. ‘“‘And the mystery ie, 
where you ever learned to doit! You never went te 
dancing-school, but there isn’t a man in the room who 
can dance half so well. I don’t see why, when you 
dance like this, you always make such a fuss about 
coming to parties.” 

He sounded his brief laugh, a jeering bark out of 
one side of the mouth, and swung her miraculously 
through a closing space between two other couples. 
*You know a lot about what goes on, don’t you? 
You prob’ly think there’s no other place to dance in 
this town except these frozen-face joints.” 

***rozen face?’” she echoed, laughing. “Why, 
everybody’s having a splendid time. Look at 
them.” | 

“Qh, they holler loud enough,” he said. “They 
do it 0 make each other think they’re havin’ a good 


ALICE ADAMS 87 


time. You don’t call that Palmer family frozen- 
face berries, I s’pose. No?” 

“Certainly not. They’re just dignified and-———”’ 

“Yeuh!” said Walter. “They’re dignified, 
*specially when you tried to whisper to Mildred to 
show how in with her you were, and she moved you 
on that way. She’s a hot friend, isn’t she!” 

“She didn’t mean anything by it. She——” 

“Ole Palmer’s a hearty, slap you-on-the-back ole 
berry,” Walter interrupted; adding in a casual tone, 
“All I'd like, I'd like to hit him.” 

“Walter! By the way, you mustn’t forget to ask 
Mildred for a dance before the evening is over.” 

“Me?” He produced the lop-sided appearance of 
his laugh, but without making it vocal. “You 
watch me do it!” 

“She probably won’t have one left, but you must 
ask her, anyway.” 

“Why must [?” 

‘Because, in the first place, you’re supposed to, 
and, in the second place, she’s my most intimate 
friend.” 

“Yeuh? Is she? Ive heard you pull that ‘most- 
intimate-friend’ stuff often enough about her. 
What’s she ever do to show she is?” 


88 ALICE ADAMS 


““Never mind. You really must ask her, Walter. 
I want you to; and I want you to ask several other 
girls afterwhile; I’ll tell you who.” 

**Keep on wanting; it'll do you good.” 


93 





“Oh, but you really 

“Listen!” he said. ‘I’m just as liable to dance 
with any of these fairies as I am to buy a bucket 0’ 
rusty tacks and eat ’em. Forget it! Soon as I get 
rid of you I’m goin’ back to that room where I left my 
hat and overcoat and smoke myself to death.” 

“Well,” she said, a little ruefully, as the frenzy 
of Jazz Louie and his half-breeds was suddenly abated 
to silence, “you mustn’t—you mustn’t get rid of 
me foo soon, Walter.” 

They stood near one of the wide doorways, re- 
maining where they had stopped. Other couples, 
everywhere, joined one another, forming vivacious 
clusters, but none of these groups adopted the 
brother and sister, nor did any one appear to be 
hurrying in Alice’s direction to ask her for the next 
dance. She looked about her, still maintaining that 
jubilance of look and manner she felt so necessary— 
for it is to the girls who are “having a good time” 
that partners are attracted—and, in order to lend 
greater colour to her impersonation of a lively belle, 


ALICE ADAMS 89 


she began to chatter loudly, bringing into play an 
accompaniment of frolicsome gesture. She brushed 
Walter’s nose saucily with the bunch of violets in her 
hand, tapped him on the shoulder, shook her pretty 
forefinger in his face, flourished her arms, kept her 
shoulders moving, and laughed continuously as she 
spoke. 

“You naughty old Walter!” she cried. ‘Arent 
you ashamed to be such a wonderful dancer and then 
only dance with your own little sister! You could 
dance on the stage if you wanted to. Why, you 
could made your fortune that way! Why don’t you? 
Wouldn’t it be just lovely to have all the rows and 
rows of people clapping their hands and shouting, 
‘Hurrah! Hurrah, for Walter Adams! Hurrah! 
Hurrah! Hurrah!” 

He stood looking at her in stolid pity. 

“Cut it out,” he said. “You better be givin’ some 
of these berries the eye so they’ll ask you to dance.” 

She was not to be so easily checked, and laughed 
loudly, flourishing her violets in his face again. 
“You would like it; you know you would; you 
needn’t pretend! Just think! A whole big audience 
shouting, ‘Hurrah! Hurrah! Hur th 

“The place ‘ll be pulled if you get any noisier,” 





90 ALICE ADAMS 


he interrupted, not ungently. “Besides, I’m no 
muley cow.” 

*“A ‘cow?’” she laughed. ‘‘What on earth——” 

“T can’t eat dead violets,” he explained. “So 
don’t keep tryin’ to make me do it.” 

This had the effect he desired, and subdued her; 
she abandoned her unsisterly coquetries, and looked 
beamingly about her, but her smile was more mechan- 
ical than it had been at first. 

At home she had seemed beautiful; but here, where 
the other girls competed, things were not as they had 
been there, with only her mother and Miss Perry 
to give contrast. These crowds of other girls had 
all done their best, also, to look beautiful, though not 
one of them had worked so hard for such a con- 
summation as Alice had. They did not need to; they 
did not need to get their mothers to make old dresses 
over; they did not need to hunt violets in the rain. 

At home her dress had seemed beautiful; but that 
was different, too, where there were dozens of brilliant 
fabrics, fashioned in new ways—some of these new 
ways startling, which only made the wearers centers 
of interest and shocked no one. And Alice re- 
membered that she had heard a girl say, not long 
before, “Oh, organdie! Nobody wears organdie for 


ALICE ADAMS 91 


evening gowns except in midsummer.” Alice had 
thought little of this; but as she looked about her and 
saw no organdie except her own, she found greater 
difficulty in keeping her smile as arch and spontane- 
ous as she wished it. In fact, it was beginning to 
make her face ache a little. 

Mildred came in from the corridor, heavily 
attended. She carried a great bouquet of violets 
laced with lilies-of-the-valley; and the violets were 
lusty, big purple things, their stems wrapped in 
cloth of gold, with silken cords dependent, ending in 
long tassels. She and her convoy passed near the 
two young Adamses; and it appeared that one of the 
convoy besought his hostess to permit “‘cutting in”’; 
they were “doing it other places’”’ of late, he urged; 
but he was denied and told to console himself by 
holding the bouquet, at intervals, until his third of 
the sixteenth dance should come. Alice looked du- 
biously at her own bouquet. 

Suddenly she felt that the violets betrayed her; 
that any one who looked at them could see how 
rustic, how innocent of any florist’s craft they were. 
*““T can’t eat dead violets,’ Walter said. The little 
wild flowers, dying indeed in the warm air, were 
drooping in a forlorn mass; and it seemed to her that 


92 ALICE ADAMS 


whoever noticed them would guess that she had 
picked them herself. She decided to get rid of them. 

Walter was becoming restive. ‘“‘Look here!” he 
said. ‘“‘Can’t you flag one o’ these long-tailed birds 
to take you on for the next dance? You came to 
have a good time; why don’t you get busy and have 
it? J want to get out and smoke.” 

“You mustn’t leave me, Walter,” she whispered, 
hastily. ‘“‘Somebody’ll come for me before long, but 
until they do——”’ 

‘Well, couldn’t you sit somewhere?” 

““No, no! There isn’t any one I could sit with.” 

“Well, why not? Look at those ole dames in the 
corners. What’s the matter your tyin’ up with some 
o’ them for a while?” 

‘Please, Walter; no!” 

In fact, that indomitable smile of hers was the 
more difficult to maintain because of these very 
elders to whom Walter referred. They were mothers 
of girls among the dancers, and they were there to 
fend and contrive for their offspring; to keep them in 
countenance through any trial; to lend them diplo- 
macy in the carrying out of all enterprises; to be 
“background” for them; and in these essentially 
biological functionings to imitate their own matings 


ALICE ADAMS 93 


and renew the excitement of their nuptial periods. 
Older men, husbands of these ladies and fathers of 
eligible girls, were also to be seen, most of them with 
Mr. Palmer in a billiard-room across the corridor, 

Mr. and Mrs. Adams had not been invited. “Of 
course papa and mama just barely know Mildred 
Palmer,” Alice thought, “and most of the other 
girls’ fathers and mothers are old friends of Mr. and 
Mrs. Palmer, but I do think she might have asked 
papa and mama, anyway—she needn’t have been 
afraid just to ask them; she knew they couldn’t 
come.” And her smiling lip twitched a little threaten- 
ingly, as she concluded the silent monologue. “I sup- 
pose she thinks I ought to be glad enough she asked 
Walter!” 

Walter was, in fact, rather noticeable. He was 
not Mildred’s only guest to wear a short coat and 
to appear without gloves; but he was singular (at 
least in his present surroundings) on account of a 
kind of coiffuring he favoured, his hair having been 
shaped after what seemed a Mongol inspiration. 
Only upon the top of the head was actual hair per- 
ceived, the rest appearing to be nudity. And even 
\more than by any difference in mode he was set 
apart by his look and manner, in which there seemed 


94 ALICE ADAMS 


to be a brooding, secretive and jeering superiority; 
and this was most vividly expressed when he felt 
called upon for his loud, short, lop-sided laugh. 
Whenever he uttered it Alice laughed, too, as loudly 
as she could, to cover it. 

“Well,” he said. “How long we goin’ to stand 
here? My feet are sproutin’ roots.” 

Alice took his arm, and they began to walk aim- 
lessly through the rooms, though she tried to look 
as if they had a definite destination, keeping her eyes 
eager and her lips parted;—people had called jovially 
to them from the distance, she meant to imply, and 
they were going to join these merry friends. She 
was still upon this ghostly errand when a furious out- 
break of drums and saxophones sounded a prelude 
for the second dance. 

Walter danced with her again, but he gave her a 
warning. “I don’t want to leave you high and dry,” 
he told her, “but I can’t stand it. I got to get some- 
where I don’t haf’ to hurt my eyes with these berries; 
I'll go blind if I got to look at any more of em. I’m 
goin’ out to smoke as soon as the music begins the 
next time, and you better get fixed for it.” 

Alice tried to get fixed for it. As they danced she 
nodded sunnily to every man whose eye she caught, 


ALICE ADAMS 95 


smiled her smile with the under lip caught. be- 
tween her teeth; but it was not until the end of the 
intermission after the dance that she saw help vom- 
ing. 

Across the room sat the globular lady she had en- 
countered that morning, and beside the globular lady 
sat a round-headed, round-bodied girl; her daughter, 
at first glance. The family contour was also as evi- 
dent a characteristic of the short young man who 
stood in front of Mrs. Dowling, engaged with her in 
a discussion which was not without evidences of an 
earnestness almost impassioned. Like Walter, he 
was declining to dance a third time with sister; he 
wished to go elsewhere. 

Alice from a sidelong eye watched the controversy: 
she saw the globular young man glance toward her, 
over his shoulder; whereupon Mrs. Dowling, follow- 
ing this glance, gave Alice a look of open fury, be- 
came much more vehement in the argument, and 
even struck her knee with a round, fat fist for empha- 
sis. 

“I’m on my way,” said Walter. “‘There’s the 


bd 


music startin’ up again, and I told you—— 
She nodded gratefully. “‘It’s all right—but come 
back before long, Walter.” 


96 ALICE ADAMS 


The globular young man, red with annoyance, had 
torn himself from his family and was hastening 
across the room to her. “C’n I have this dance?”’ 

“Why, you nice Frank Dowling!” Alice cried. 
**How lovely!” 


CHAPTER VII 
HEY danced. Mr. Dowling should have 


found other forms of exercise and pastime. 
Nature has not designed everyone for danc- 
ing, though sometimes those she has denied are the 
last to discover her niggardliness. But the round 
young man was at least vigorous enough—too much 
so, when his knees collided with Alice’s—and he was 
too sturdy to be thrown off his feet, himself, or to 
allow his partner to fall when he tripped her. He 
held her up valiantly, and continued to beat a path 
through the crowd of other dancers by main force. 
He paid no attention to anything suggested by the 
efforts of the musicians, and appeared to be unaware 
that there should have been some connection between 
what they were doing and what he was doing; but he 
may have listened to other music of his own, for his 
expression was of high content; he seemed to feel 
no doubt whatever that he was dancing. Alice kept 
as far away from him as under the circumstances she 


could; and when they stopped she glanced down, and 
07 


98 ALICE ADAMS 


found the execution of unseen manceuvres, within the 
protection of her skirt, helpful to one of her insteps 
and to the toes of both of her slippers. 

Her cheery partner was paddling his rosy brows 
with a fine handkerchief. “That was great!” he 
said. “Let’s go out and sit in the corridor; they’ve 
got some comfortable chairs out there.” 

““Well—let’s not,” she returned. “I believe I'd 
rather stay in here and look at the crowd.” 

“No; that isn’t it,” he said, chiding her with a 
waguyish forefinger. ‘You think if you go out there 
you'll miss a chance of someone else asking you for 
the next dance, and so you'll have to give it to me.” 

““How absurd!” Then, afier a look about her that 
revealed nothing encouraging, she added graciously, 
“You can have the next if you want it.” 

‘Great!’ he exclaimed, mechanically. “Now let’s 
get out of here—out of this room, anyhow.” 

““Why? Whai’s the matter with . 

““My mother,” Mr. Dowling explained. “But 
don’t look at her. She keeps motioning me to come 
and see after Ella, and I’m simply noé going to do it, 
you see!” 

Alice laughed. ‘I don’t believe it’s so much that,” 
she said, and consented to walk with him to a poimt 





ALICE ADAMS 99 


in the next room from which Mrs. Dowling’s continu- 
ous signalling could not be seen. ‘Your mother 
hates me.” ) 

“Oh, no; I wouldn’t say that. No, she don’t,” 
he protested, innocently. “She don’t know you 
more than just to speak to, you see. So how could 
she?” 

“Well, she does. I can tell.” 

A frown appeared upon his rounded brow. “No; 
T’ll tell you the way she feels. It’s like this: Ella 
isn’t too popular, you know—it’s hard to see why, 
because she’s a right nice girl, in her way—and 
mother thinks I ought to look after her, you see. 
She thinks I ought to dance a whole lot with her my- 
self, and stir up other fellows to dance with her—it’s 
simply impossible to make mother understand you 
can’t do that, you see. And then about me, you see, 
if she had her way I wouldn’t get to dance with any- 
body at all except girls like Mildred Palmer and 
Henrietta Lamb. Mother wants to run my whole 
programme for me, you understand, but the trouble of 
it is—about girls like that, you see—well, I couldn’t 
do what she wants, even if I wanted to myself, be- 
cause you take those girls, and by the time I get Ella 
off my hands for a minute, why, their dances are 


100 ALICE ADAMS 

always every last one taken, and where do I come 
Pa 

, Alice nodded, her amiability undamaged. “TI see. 
So that’s why you dance with me.” 

“No, I like to,’ he protested. “I rather dance 
with you than I do with those girls.”” And he added 
with a retrospective determination which showed 
that he had been through quite an experience with 
Mrs. Dowling in this matter. “I told mother I 
would, too!” 

“Did it take all your courage, Frank?” 

He looked at her shrewdly. ‘“‘Now you’re trying 
to tease me,” he said. ‘“‘I don’t care; I would rather 
dance with you! In the first place, you’re a perfectly 
beautiful dancer, you see, and in the second, a man 
feels a lot more comfortable with you than he does 
with them. Of course I know almost all the other 
fellows get along with those girls all right; but I don’t 
waste any time on ’em I don’t have to. TI like people 
that are always cordial to everybody, you see—the 
way you are.” | 

“Thank you,” she said, thoughtfully. 

“Oh, I mean it,” he insisted. “There goes the 
band again. Shall we——?”’ : 

“Suppose we sit it out?” she suggested. “I be- 


ALICE ADAMS 101 


lieve I’d like to go out in the corridor, after all—it’s 
pretty warm in here.” 

Assenting cheerfully, Dowling conducted her to a 
pair of easy-chairs within a secluding grove of box- 
trees, and when they came to this retreat they found 
Mildred Palmer just departing, under escort of a 
well-favoured gentleman about thirty. As these two 
walked slowly away, in the direction of the dancing- 
floor, they left it not to be doubted that they were on 
_ excellent terms with each other; Mildred was evi- 
dently willing to make their progress even slower, for 
she halted momentarily, once or twice; and her up- 
ward glances to her tall companion’s face were of 
a gentle, almost blushing deference. Never before 
had Alice seen anything like this in her friend’s 
manner. 

“How queer!”’ she murmured. 

““What’s queer?’ Dowling inquired as they sat 
down. 

“Who was that man?” 

*“*Haven’t you met him?” 

“T never saw him before. Who is he?” 

“Why, it’s this Arthur Russell.” 

“What Arthur Russell? I never heard of him.” 

Mr. Dowling was puzzled. “Why, that’s funny! 


102 ALICE ADAMS 


Only the last time I saw you, you were telling me how 
awiully well you knew Mildred Palmer.” 

“Why, certainly I do,” Alice informed him. 
*“*She’s my most intimate friend.” 

“That’s what makes it seem so funny you haven’t 
heard anything about this Russell, because everybody 
says even if she isn’t engaged to him right now, she 
most likely will be before very long. I must say it 
looks a good deal that way to me, myself.” 


1°? 


“What nonsense!” Alice exclaimed. “‘She’s never » 
even mentioned him to me.” 

The young man glanced at her dubiously and 
passed a finger over the tiny prong that dashingly 
composed the whole substance of his moustache. 

“Well, you see, Mildred ts pretty reserved,” he 
remarked. “‘This Russell is some kind of cousin of 
the Palmer family, I understand.” 

**He is?”’ 

**Yes—second or third or something, the girls say. 
You see, my sister Ella hasn’t got much to do at 
home, and don’t read anything, or sew, or play soli- 
taire, you see; and she hears about pretty much every- 
thing that goes on, you see. Well, Ella says a lot of 
the girls have been talking about Mildred and this 


Arthur Russell for quite a while back, you see. 


ALICE ADAMS 103 


They were all wondering what he was going to look 
like, you see; because he only got here yesterday; and 
that proves she must have been talking to some of 


93 





’em, or else how 

Alice laughed airily, but the pretty sound ended 
abruptly with an audible intake of breath. “Of 
course, while Mildred 7s my most intimate friend,” 
she said, “‘I don’t mean she tells me everything—and 
naturally she has other friends besides. What else: 
did your sister say she told them about this Mr, 
Russell?” 

“‘Well, it seems he’s very well off; at least Henri- 
etta Lamb told Ella he was. Ella says f 

Alice interrupted again, with an increased irrita- 
bility. “‘Oh, never mind what Ella says! Let’s find 
something better to talk about than Mr. Russell!” 

“Well, I’m willing,” Mr. Dowling assented, rue- 
fully. ““What you want to talk about?” 

But this liberal offer found her unresponsive; she 





sat leaning back, silent, her arms along the arms of 
her chair, and her eyes, moist and bright, fixed upon 
a wide doorway where the dancers. fluctuated. She 
was disquieted by more than Mildred’s. reserve, 
though reserve so marked had certainly the signifi- 
cance of a warning that Alice’s definition, ““my most 


104 ALICE ADAMS 


intimate friend,’’ lacked sanction. Indirect notice 
to this effect could not well have been more em- 
phatic, but the sting of it was left for a later moment. 
Something else preoccupied Alice: she had just been 
surprised by an odd experience. At first sight of 
this Mr. Arthur Russell, she had said to herself 
instantly, in words as definite as if she spoke them 
aloud, though they seemed more like words spoken 
to her by some unknown person within her: “There! 
That’s exactly the kind of looking man I’d like to 
marry!” 

In the eyes of the restless and the longing, Provi- 
dence often appears to be worse than inscrutable: 
an unreliable Omnipotence given to haphazard whim- 
sies in dealing with its own creatures, choosing at 
random some among them to be rent with tragic dep- 
rivations and others to be petted with blessing upon 
blessing. In Alice’s eyes, Mildred had been blessed 
enough; something ought to be left over, by this time, 
for another girl. The final touch to the heaping per- 
fection of Christmas-in-everything for Mildred was 
that this Mr. Arthur Russell, good-looking, kind- 
looking, graceful, the perfect fiancé, should be also 
‘very well off.” Of course! These rich always 
married one another. And while the Mildreds 





ALICE ADAMS 105 


danced with their Arthur Russells the best an out- 
sider could do for herself was to sit with Frank 
Dowling—the one last course left her that was 
better than dancing with him. 

“Well, what do you want to talk about?” he 
inquired. 

“Nothing,” she said. “Suppose we just sit, 
Frank.” But a moment later she remembered some- 
thing, and, with a sudden animation, began to 
prattle. She pointed to the musicians down the 
corridor. “Oh, look at them! Look at the leader! 
Aren’t they funny? Someone told me they’re 
called ‘Jazz Louie and his half-breed bunch.’ Isn’t 
that just crazy? Don’t you love it? Do watch 
them, Frank.” | 

She continued to chatter, and, while thus keeping 
his glance away from herself, she detached the for- 
lorn bouquet of dead violets from her dress and laid 
it gently beside the one she had carried The latter 
already reposed in the obscurity selected for it at 
the base of one of the box-trees. 

Then she was abruptly silent. 

“You certainly are a funny girl,” Dowling re- 
marked. “‘You say you don’t want to talk about 
anything at all, and all of a sudden you break out and 


106 ALICE ADAMS 


talk a blue streak; and just about the time I begin to 
get interested in what you’re saying you shut off! 
What’s the matter with girls, anyhow, when they do 
things like that?” 

“I don’t know; we’re just queer, I guess.” 

“I say so! Well, what'll we do now? Talk, or 
just sit?” 

“Suppose we just sit some more.” 

“Anything to oblige,’ he assented. “I’m willing 
to sit as long as you like.” 

But even as he made his amiability clear in this 
matter, the peace was threatened—his mother came 
down the corridor like a rolling, ominous cloud. She 
was looking about her on all sides, in a fidget of 
annoyance, searching for him, and to his dismay she 
saw him. She immediately made a horrible face at 
his companion, beckoned to him imperiously with a 
dumpy arm, and shook her head reprovingly. The 
unfortunate young man tried to repulse her with an 
icy stare, but this effort having obtained little to en- 
courage his feeble hope of driving her away, he shifted 
his chair so that his back was toward her discomfiting 
pantomime. He should have known better, the 
instant result was Mrs. Dowling in motion at an 
impetuous waddle. 


ALICE ADAMS 107 


She entered the box-tree seclusion with the lower 
rotundities of her face hastily modelled into the re- 
semblance of an over-benevolent smile—a contortion 
which neglected to spread its intended geniality up- 
ward to the exasperated eyes and anxious forehead. 

“T think your mother wants to speak to you, 
Frank,” Alice said, upon this advent. 

Mrs. Dowling nodded to her. “Good evening, 
Miss Adams,” she said. “I just thought as you and 
Frank weren’t dancing you wouldn’t mind my dis- 
turbing you——”’ 

“Not at all,” Alice murmured. 

Mr. Dowling seemed of a different mind. “Well, 
what do you want?” he inquired, whereupon his 
mother struck him roguishly with her fan. 

“Bad fellow!” She turned to Alice. “I’m sure 
you won’t mind excusing him to let him do some-: 
thing for his old mother, Miss Adams.” 

“What do you want?” the son repeated. 

“Two very nice things,” Mrs. Dowling informed 
him. “Everybody is so anxious for Henrietta 
Lamb to have a pleasant evening, because it’s the 
very first time she’s been anywhere since her father’s 
death, and of course her dear grandfather’s an old 


> 





friend of ours, and . 


108 ALICE ADAMS 


“Well, well!’ her son interrupted. “Miss Adams 
isn’t interested in all this, mother.”’ 
“But Henrietta came to speak to Ella and me, and 


3> 





I told her you were so anxious to dance with her 

“Here!” he cried. “Look here! Id rather do my 
own——”’ 

“Yes; that’s just it,” Mrs. Dowling explained. 
“I just thought it was such a good opportunity; and 
Henrietta said she had most of her dances taken, but 
she’d give you one if you asked her before they were 
all gone. So I thought you’d better see her as soon 
as possible.” 

Dowling’s face had become rosy. “I refuse to do 
anything of the kind.” 

“Bad fellow!”’ said his mother, gaily. “I thought 
this would be the best time for you to see Henrietta, 
because it won’t be long till all her dances are gone, 
and you’ve promised on your word to dance the next 
with Ella, and you mightn’t have a chance to do it 
then. I’m sure Miss Adams won’t mind if you——”’ 

“Not at all,” Alice said. 

“Well, Z mind!” he said. “I wish you could 
understand that when I want to dance with any girl 
I don’t need my mother to ask her for me. I really 


am more than six years old!”’ 


ALICE ADAMS 109 


He spoke with too much vehemence, and Mrs. 
Dowling at once saw how to have her way. As with 
husbands and wives, so with many fathers and 
daughters, and so with some sons and mothers: the 
man will himself be cross in public and think noth- 
ing of it, nor will he greatly mind a little crossness 
on the part of the woman; but let her show agita- 
tion before any spectator, he is instantly reduced 
to a coward’s slavery. Women understand that 
ancient weakness, of course; for it is one of their 
most important means of defense, but can be used 
ignobly. 

Mrs. Dowling permitted a tremulousness to become 
audible in her voice. “It isn’t very—very pleasant 
—to be talked to like that by your own son—before 
strangers!”’ 

“Oh, my! Look here!” the stricken Dowling 
protested. “J didn’t say anything, mother. I was 
just joking about how you never get over thinking 
I’m a little boy. I only——” 

Mrs. Dowling continued: “I just thought I was 
doing you a little favour. I didn’t think it would 
make you so angry.” 

“Mother, for goodness’ sake! Miss Adams’ll 
think . 





110 ALICE ADAMS 


“T suppose,” Mrs. Dowling interrupted, piteously, 
“T suppose it doesn’t matter what J think!” 

“Oh, gracious!’ 

Alice interfered; she perceived that the ruthless 
Mrs. Dowling meant to have her way. “I think 
you'd better go, Frank. Really.” 

“There!”’ his mother cried. “‘Miss Adams says 
so, herself!. What more do you want?” 

“Oh, gracious!”’ he lamented again, and, with a 
sick look over his shoulder at Alice, permitted his 
mother to take his arm and propel him away. Mrs. 
Dowling’s spirits had strikingly recovered even be- 
fore the pair passed from the corridor: she moved 
almost bouncingly beside her embittered son, and 
her eyes and all the convolutions of her abundant face 
were blithe. 

Alice went in search of Walter, but without much 
hope of finding him. What he did with himself at 
frozen-face dances. was one of his most successful 
mysteries, and her present excursion gave her no 
clue leading to its solution. When the musicians 
again lowered their instruments for an interval she 
had returned, alone, to her former seat within the 
partial shelter of the box-trees. 

She had now to practise an art that affords but a 


ALICE ADAMS 111 


limited variety of methods, even to the expert: the 
art of seeming to have an escort or partner when there 
is none. The practitioner must imply, merely by 
expression and attitude, that the supposed companion 
has left her for only a few moments, that she herself 
has sent him upon an errand; and, if possible, the 
minds of observers must be directed toward a con- 


_ clusion that this errand of her devising is an amusing 


one; at all events, she is alone temporarily and of 
choice, not deserted. She awaits a devoted man who 
may return at any instant. 

Other people desired to sit in Alice’s nook, but dis- 
covered her in occupancy. She had moved the 
vacant chair closer to her own, and she sat with her 
arm extended so that her hand, holding her lace 


| kerchief, rested upon the back of this second chair, 
claiming it. Such a preémption, like that of a 
_ traveller’s bag in the rack, was unquestionable; and, 
- for additional evidence, sitting with her knees crossed, 


she kept one foot continuously moving a little, in 


cadence with the other, which tapped the floor. 
Moreover, she added a fine detail: her half-smile, 


~ with the under lip caught, seemed to struggle against 


repression, as if she found the service engaging her 


absent companion even more amusing than she would 


112 ALICE ADAMS 


let him see when he returned: there was jovial 
intrigue of some sort afoot, evidently. Her eyes, 
beaming with secret fun, were averted from intrud- 
ers, but sometimes, when couples approached, seek- 
ing possession of the nook, her thoughts about the 
absentee appeared to threaten her with outright 
laughter; and though one or two girls looked at her 
skeptically, as they turned away, their escorts felt no 
such doubts, and merely wondered what importantly 
funny aifair Alice Adams was engaged in. She had 
learned to do it perfectly. 

She had learned it during the last two years; she 
was twenty when for the first time she had the shock 
of finding herself without an applicant for one of her 
dances. When she was sixteen “all the nice boys in 
town,” as her mother said, crowded the Adamses’ 
small veranda and steps, or sat near by, cross-legged 
on the lawn, on summer evenings; and at eighteen 
she had replaced the boys with “the older men.” 
By this time most of “‘the other girls,”’ her contempo- 
raries, were away at school or college, and when they 
came home to stay, they “came out’’—that feeble 
revival of an ancient custom offering the maiden to 
the ceremonial inspection of the tribe. Alice neither 
went away nor “came out,” and, in contrast with 


ALICE ADAMS 113 


those who did, she may have seemed to lack freshness 
of lustre—jewels are richest when revealed all new in 
a white velvet box. And Alice may have been too 
eager to secure new retainers, too kind in her efforts 
to keep the old ones. She had been a belle too soon. 


CHAPTER VIII 


HE device of the absentee partner has the 

defect that it cannot be employed for longer 

than ten or fifteen minutes at a time, and it 
may not be repeated more than twice in one evening: 
a single repetition, indeed, is weak, and may prove a 
betrayal. Alice knew that her present performance 
could be effective during only this interval between 
dances; and though her eyes were guarded, she 
anxiously counted over the partnerless young men 
who lounged together in the doorways within her 
view. Every one of them ought to have asked her 
for dances, she thought, and although she might 
have been put to it to give a reason why any of them 
“ought,” her heart was hot with resentment against 
them. 

For a girl who has been a belle, it is harder to live 
through these bad times than it is for one who has 
never known anything better. Like a figure of 
painted and brightly varnished wood, Ella Dowling 


sat against the wall through dance after dance with 
114 


ALICE ADAMS 115 


glassy imperturbability; it was easier to be wooden, 
Alice thought, if you had your mother with you, as 
Ella had. You were left with at least the shred of a 
pretense that you came to sit with your mother as a 
spectator, and not to offer yourself to be danced with 
by men who looked you over and rejected you—not 
for the first time. ‘“‘Not for the first time”: there 
lay a sting! Why had you thought this time might 
be different from the other times? Why had you 
broken your back picking those hundreds of violets? 
Hating the fatuous young men in the doorways 
more bitterly for every instant that she had to main- — 
tain her tableau, the smiling Alice knew fierce 
impulses to spring to her feet and shout at them, 
“You idiots!” Hands in pockets, they lounged 
against the pilasters, or faced one another, laughing 
vaguely, each one of them seeming to Alice no more 
than so much mean beef in clothes. She wanted to 
tell them they were no better than that; and it 
seemed a cruel thing of heaven to let them go on be- 
lieving themselves young lords. They were doing 
nothing, killing time. Wasn’t she at her lowest 
value at least a means of killing time? Evidently 
the mean beeves thought not. And when one of 
them finally lounged across the corridor and spoke to 


116 ALICE ADAMS 


her, he was the very one to whom she preferred her 
loneliness. 

“Waiting for somebody, Lady Alicia?”’ he asked, 
negligently; and his easy burlesque of her name was 
like the familiarity of the rest of him. He was one 
of those full-bodied, grossly handsome men who are 
powerful and active, but never submit themselves to 
the rigour of becoming athletes, though they shoot and 
fish from expensive camps. Gloss is the most shining 
outward mark of the type. Nowadays these men no 
longer use brilliantine on their moustaches, but they 
have gloss bought from manicure-girls, from masseurs, 
and from automobile-makers; and their eyes, usually 
large, are glossy. None of this is allowed to inter- 
fere with business; these are “‘good business men,” 
and often make large fortunes. They are men of 
imagination about two things—women and money, 
and, combining their imaginings about both, usually 
make a wise first marriage. Later, however, they are 
apt to imagine too much about some little woman 
without whom life seems duller than need be. They 
run away, leaving the first wife well enough dowered. 
They are never intentionally unkind to women, and 
in the end they usually make the mistake of thinking 
they have had their money’s worth of life. Here 





ALICE ADAMS 117 


was Mr. Harvey Malone, a young specimen in an 
earlier stage of development, trying to marry Henri- 
etta Lamb, and now sauntering over to speak to 
Alice, as a time-killer before his next dance with 
Henrietta. | 

Alice made no response to his question, and he 
dropped lazily into the vacant chair, from which she 
sharply withdrew her hand. “I might as well use 
his chair till he comes, don’t you think? You don’t 
mind, do you, old girl?”’ 

“Oh, no,” Alice said. ‘“‘It doesn’t matter one way 
or the other. Please don’t call me that.” 

‘So that’s how you feel?”” Mr. Malone laughed 
indulgently, without much interest. “I’ve been 
meaning to come to see you for a long time—honestly 
I have—because I wanted to have a good talk with 
you about old times. I know you think’ it was 
funny, after the way I used to come to your house two 

or three times a week, and sometimes oftener—well, 
TI don’t blame you for being hurt, the way I stopped 
without explaining or anything. ‘The truth is there 
wasn’t any reason: I just happened to have a lot of 
important things to do and couldn’t find the time. 
But Iam going to call on you some evening—honestly 
Tam. I don’t wonder you think——” 


118 ALICE ADAMS 


““You’re mistaken,” Alice said. “I’ve. never 
thought anything about it at all.” 

** Well, well!’’ he said, and looked at her languidly. 
‘“What’s the use of being cross with this old man? 
He always means well.” And, extending his arm, he 
would have given her a friendly pat upon the shoulder 
but she evaded it... “‘ Well, well!’ he said. “Seems 
to me you're getting awful tetchy! Don’t you like 
your old friends any more?”’ 

**Not all of them.” 

**Who’s the new one?”’ he asked, teasingly. “Come 
on and tell us, Alice. Who is it you were holding this 
chair for?” 

**Never mind.” 

“Well, all I’ve got to do is to sit here till he comes 
back; then I'll see who it is.”’ 

“He may not come back before you have to go.” 

“‘Guess you got me that time,” Malone admitted, 
laughing as he rose. “‘They’re tuning up, and I’ve 
got this dance. Iam coming around to see you some 
evening.” He moved away, calling back over his 
shoulder, “Honestly, I am!” 

Alice did not look at him, 

She had held her tableau as long as she could; 
it was time for her to abandon the box-trees; and she 


ALICE ADAMS 119 


stepped forth frowning, as if a little annoyed with the 
absentee for being such a time upon her errand; 
whereupon the two chairs were instantly seized by a 
coquetting pair who intended to “sit out”’ the dance. 
She walked quickly down the broad corridor, turned 
into the broader hall, and hurriedly entered the 
dressing-room where she had left her wraps. 
She stayed here as long as she could, pretending 
to arrange her hair at a mirror, then fidgeting with 
one of her slipper-buckles; but the intelligent 
elderly woman in charge of the room made an in- 
definite sojourn impracticable. ‘Perhaps I could 
help you with that buckle, Miss,” she suggested, 
approaching. “Has it come loose?” Alice wrenched 
desperately; then it was loose. The competent 
woman, producing needle and thread, deftly made 
the buckle fast; and there was nothing for Alice to 
do but to express her gratitude and go. 

She went to the door of the cloak-room opposite, 
where a coloured man stood watchfully in the door- 
way. “I wonder if you know which of the gentle- 


> 


men is my brother, Mr. Walter Adams,” she said. 
*Yes’m; I know him.” 
“Could you tell me where he is?” 


*“No’m; I couldn’t say.” 


120 ALICE ADAMS 


“Well, if you see him, would you please tell him 
that his sister, Miss Adams, is looking for him and 
very anxious to speak to him?”’ 

“Yes’m. Sho’ly, sho’ly!” 

As she went away he stared after her and seemed 
to swell with some bursting emotion. In fact, it 
was too much for him, and he suddenly retired within 
the room, releasing strangulated laughter. 

Walter remonstrated. Behind an excellent screen 
of coats and hats, in a remote part of the room, he 
was kneeling on the floor, engaged in a game of 
chance with a second coloured attendant; and the 
laughter became so vehement that it not only 
interfered with the pastime in hand, but threatened 
to attract frozen-face attention. 

“I cain’ he’p it, man,” the laughter explained. 
“TI cain’ he’p it! You sut’n’y the beatin’es’ white 
boy ’n ’is city!” 

The dancers were swinging into an “encore” as 
Alice halted for an irresolute moment in a doorway. 
Across the room, a cluster of matrons sat chatting ab- 
sently, their eyes on their dancing daughters; and 
Alice, finding a refugee’s courage, dodged through 
the scurrying couples, seated herself in a chair on the 
outskirts of this colony of elders, and began to talk 


ALICE ADAMS 121 


eagerly to the matron nearest her. The matron 
seemed unaccustomed to so much vivacity, and 
responded but dryly, whereupon Alice was more 
vivacious than ever; for she meant now to present 
the picture of a jolly girl too much interested in 
these wise older women to bother about every 
foolish young man who asked her for a dance. 

Her matron was constrained to go so far as to 
supply a tolerant nod, now and then, in complement 
to the girl’s animation, and Alice was grateful for 
the nods. In this fashion she supplemented the 
exhausted resources of the dressing-room and the 
box-tree nook; and lived through two more dances, 
when again Mr. Frank Dowling presented himself as 
a partner. 

She needed no pretense to seek the dressing-room 
for repairs after that number; this time they were 
necessary and genuine. Dowling waited for her, and 
when she came out he explained for the fourth or 
fifth time how the accident had happened. “It was 
entirely those other people’s fault,” he said. “They 
got me in a kind of a corner, because neither of those 
fellows knows the least thing about guiding; they 
just jam ahead and expect everybody to get out of 
their way. It was Charlotte Thom’s diamond 


122 ALICE ADAMS 


crescent pin that got caught on your dress in the 


9? 





back and made such a 

“Never mind,” Alice said in a tired voice. “The 
maid fixed it so that she says it isn’t very noticeable.” 

“Well, it isn’t,” he returned. “You could hardly 
tell there’d been anything the matter. Where do 
you want to go? Mbother’s been interfering in my 
affairs some more and I’ve got the next taken.” 

“I was sitting with Mrs. George Dresser. You 
might take me back there.” 

He left her with the matron, and Alice returned 
to her picture-making, so that once more, while 
two numbers passed, whoever cared to look was 
offered the sketch of a jolly, clever girl preoccupied 
with her elders. Then she found her friend Mildred 
standing before her, presenting Mr. Arthur Russell, 
who asked her to dance with him. 

Alice looked uncertain, as though not sure what 
her engagements were; but her perplexity cleared; 
she nodded, and swung rhythmically away with the 
tall applicant. She was not grateful to her hostess 
for this alms. What a young hostess does with a 
fiancé, Alice thought, is to make him dance with the 
unpopular girls. She supposed that Mr. Arthur 
Russell had already danced with Ella Dowling. 


ALICE ADAMS 123 


The loan of a lover, under these circumstances, 
may be painful to the lessee, and Alice, smiling 
never more brightly, found nothing to say to Mr. 
Russell, though she thought he might have found 
something to say to her. “I wonder what Mildred 
told him,” she thought. “Probably she said, 
‘Dearest, there’s one more girl you've got to help 
- me out with. You wouldn’t like her much, but she 
dances well enough and she’s having a rotten time. 
Nobody ever goes near her any more.’”’ 

When the music stopped, Russell added his ap- 
plause to the hand-clapping that encouraged the 
uproarious instruments to continue, and as they 
renewed the tumult, he said heartily, “That’s 
splendid!” 

Alice gave him a glance, necessarily at short 
range, and found his eyes kindly and pleased. Here 
was a friendly soul, it appeared, who probably 
“liked everybody.” No doubt he had applauded 
for an “encore” when he danced with Ella Dowling, 
| gave Ella the same genial look, and said, “That’s 
splendid!” 

When the “encore” was over, Alice spoke to him 
for the first time. 

“Mildred will be looking for you,” she said. 


124 ALICE ADAMS 
“TI think you’d better take me back to where you 


found me.” 
He looked surprised. “Oh, if you ” 
“Ym sure Mildred will be needing you,” Alice 





said, and as she took his arm and they walked 
toward Mrs. Dresser, she thought it might be just 
possible to make a further use of the loan. “Oh, I 


99 





wonder if you she began. 

“Yes?” he said, quickly. 

“You don’t know my brother, Walter Adams,” 
she said. “But he’s somewhere—I think possibly 
he’s in a smoking-room or some place where girls 
aren’t expected, and if you wouldn’t think it too 
much trouble to inquire——”’ 

“Tl find him,” Russell said, promptly. “Thank 
you so much for that dance. I'll bring your brother 
In a moment.” 

It was to be a long moment, Alice decided, pres- 
ently. Mrs. Dresser had grown restive; and her 
nods and vague responses to her young dependent’s 
gaieties were as meager as they could well be. Evi- 
dently the matron had no intention of appearing to 
her world in the light of a chaperone for Alice Adams; 
and she finally made this clear. With a word or 
two of excuse, breaking into something Alice was 


ALICE ADAMS 125 


saying, she rose and went to sit next to Mildred’s 
mother, who had become the nucleus of the cluster. 
So Alice was left very much against the wall, with 
short stretches of vacant chairs on each side of her. 
She had come to the end of her picture-making, 
and could only pretend that there was something 
amusing the matter with the arm of her chair. 

She supposed that Mildred’s Mr. Russell had 
forgotten Walter by this time. “I’m not even an 
intimate enough friend of Mildred’s for him to have 
thought he ought to bother to tell me he couldn’t 
find him,” she thought. And then she saw Russell 
coming across the room toward her, with Walter 
beside him. She jumped up gaily. 

“Oh, thank you!” she cried. “I know this 
naughty boy must have been terribly hard to find. 
Mildred’ll never forgive me! I’ve put you to soe 


93 





mu 

“Not at all,” he said, amiably, and went away, 
leaving the brother and sister together. 

“Walter, let’s dance just once more,” Alice said, 
touching his arm placatively. “I thought—well, 
perhaps we might go home then.” 

But Walter’s expression was that of a person upon 
whom an outrage has just been perpetrated. “No,” 


126 ALICE ADAMS 


he said. ‘“‘We’ve stayed this long, I’m goin’ toe 
wait and see what they got to eat. And you look 
here!” He turned upon her angrily. “Don’t you 


1?? 


ever cdo that again 

“Do what?” 
“Send somebody after me that pokes his nose 
into every corner of the house till he finds me! ‘Are 
you Mr. Walter Adams?’ he says. I guess he must 
asked everybody in the place if they were Mr. 
Walter Adams! Well, [ll bet a few iron men you 
wouldn’t send anybody to hunt for me again if you 
knew where he found me!” 

“Where was it?” 

Walter decided that her fit punishment was to 
know. “I was shootin’ dice with those coons in the 
cloak-room.” 

“And he saw you?” 

“Unless he was blind!” said Walter. “Come on, 
I'll dance this one more dance with you. Supper 
comes after that, and then we'll go home.” 


Mrs. Adams heard Alice’s key turning in the front 
door and hurried down the stairs to meet her. | 

“Did you get wet coming in, darling?” she asked. 
“Did you have a good time?”’ 


ALICE ADAMS 129 


“Just lovely!” Alice said, cheerily; and after 
she had arranged the latch for Walter, who had 
gone to return the little car, she followed her mother 
upstairs and hummed a dance-tune on the way. 

“Oh, I’m so glad you had a nice time,’”’ Mrs. Adams 
said, as they reached the door of her daughter’s 
room together. “‘You deserved to, and it’s lovely 
to think 

But at this, without warning, Alice threw herself 
into her mother’s arms, sobbing so loudly that in 
his room, close by, her father, half drowsing through 
the night, started to full wakefulness. 





CHAPTER Ix 


N A morning, a week after this collapse 
() of festal hopes, Mrs. Adams and her 
daughter were concluding a_ three-days’ 
disturbance, the “Spring house-cleaning’”—post- 
poned until now by Adams’s long _ illness—and 
Alice, on her knees before a chest of drawers, in her 
mother’s room, paused thoughtfully after dusting a 
packet of letters wrapped in worn muslin. She 
called to her mother, who was scrubbing the floor of 
the hallway just beyond the open door, 

“These old letters you had in the bottom drawer, 
weren't they some papa wrote you before you were 
married?” 

Mrs. Adams laughed and said, “Yes. Just put 
*em back where they were—or else up in the attic— 
anywhere you want to.” 

“Do you mind if I read one, mama?” 

Mrs. Adams laughed again. “Oh, I guess you 
can if you want to. I expect they’re pretty funny!” 


Alice laughed in response, and chose the topmost 
128 


ALICE ADAMS 129 


letter of the packet. ‘“‘My dear, beautiful girl,” it 
began; and she stared at these singular words. ‘They 
gave her a shock like that caused by overhearing 
some bewildering impropriety; and, having read them 
over to herself several times, she went on to experi- 


ence other shocks. 


My p&£aR, BEAUTIFUL GIRL: 


This time yesterday I had a mighty bad case of blues because 
I had not had a word from you in two whole long days and when 
I do not hear from you every day things look mighty down in 
the mouth to me. Now it is all so different because your letter 
has arrived and besides I have got a piece of news I believe you 
will think as fine as I do. Darling, you will be surprised, so get 
ready to hear about a big effect on our future. It is this way. 
I had sort of a suspicion the head of the firm kind of took a fancy 
to me from the first when I went in there, and liked the way I 
attended to my work and so when he took me on this business 
trip with him I felt pretty sure of it and now it turns out I was 
about right. In return I guess I have got about the best boss 
in this world and I believe you will think so too. Yes, sweet- 
heart, after the talk I have just had with him if J. A. Lamb 
asked me to cut my hand off for him I guess I would come 
pretty near doing it because what he says means the end of our 
waiting to be together. From New Years on he is going to put 
me in entire charge of the sundries dept. and what do you 
think is going to be my salary? Eleven hundred cool dollars 
a year ($1,100.00). That’s all! Just only a cool eleven hundred 
per annum! Well, I guess that will show your mother whether 
I can take care of you or not. And oh how I would like to see 
your dear, beautiful, loving face when you get this news. 


330 ALICE ADAMS 


I would like to go out on the public streets and just dance 
and shout and it is all I can do to help doing it, especially when 
I know we will be talking it all over together this time next week, 
and oh my darling, now that your folks have no excuse for 
putting it off any longer we might be in our own little home 
before Xmas. Would you be glad? 

Well, darling, this settles everything and makes our future 
just about as smooth for us as anybody could ask. I can hardly 
realize after all this waiting life’s troubles are over for you and 
me and we have nothing to do but to enjoy the happiness granted 
us by this wonderful, beautiful thing we call life. I know I am 
not any poet and the one I tried to write about you the day of 
the picnic was fearful but the way I think about you is a poem. 

Write me what you think of the news. I know but write 
me anyhow. I'll get it before we start home and I can be 
reading it over all the time on the train. 

Your always loving 


Vinci. 
The sound of her mother’s diligent scrubbing in 
the hall came back slowly to Alice’s hearing, as she 
restored the letter to the packet, wrapped the 
packet in its muslin covering, and returned it to 
the drawer. She had remained upon her knees 
while she read the letter; now she sank backward, 
sitting upon the floor with her hands behind her, 
an unconscious relaxing for better ease to think. 

Upon her face. there had fallen a look of wonder. 
For the first time she was vaguely perceiving that 
life is everlasting movement. Youth really believes 


ALICE ADAMS 18] 


what is running water to be a permanent crystalliza- 
tion and sees time fixed to a point: some people 
have dark hair, some people have blond hair, some 
people have gray hair. Until this moment, Alice 
had no conviction that there was a universe before 
she came into it... She had always thought of it as 
the background of herself: the moon was something 
to make her prettier on a summer night. 

But this old letter, through which she saw still 
flickering an ancient starlight of young love, as- 
tounded her. Faintly before her it revealed the 
whole lives of her father and mother, who had been 
young, after all—they really had—and their youth 
was now so utterly passed from them that the 
picture of it, in the letter, was like a burlesque of 
them. And so she, herself, must pass to such 
changes, too, and all that now seemed vital to her 
would be nothing. 

When her work was finished, that afternoon, she 
went into her father’s room. His recovery had 
progressed well enough to permit the departure 
of Miss Perry; and Adams, wearing one of Mrs. 
Adams’s wrappers over his night-gown, sat in a high- 
backed chair by a closed window. The weather was 
warm, but the closed window and the flannel wrapper 


132 ALICE ADAMS 


had not sufficed him: round his shoulders he had an 
old crocheted scarf of Alice’s; his legs were wrapped 
m a heavy comfort; and, with these swathings about 
him, and his eyes closed, his thin and grizzled head 
making but a slight indentation in the pillow sup- 
porting it, he looked old and little and queer. 

Alice would have gone out softly, but without 
opening his eyes, he spoke to her: “Don’t go, 
dearie. Come sit with the old man a little while.” 

She brought a chair near_his. “I thought you 
were napping.” 

“No. I don’t hardly ever do that. I just drift a 
little sometimes.” 

“How do you mean you drift, papa?” 

He looked at her vaguely. “Oh, I don’t know. 
Kind of pictures. They get a little mixed up—old 
times with times still ahead, like planning what to 
do, you know. That’s as near a nap as I get— 
when the pictures mix up some. I suppose it’s sort 
of drowsing.”’ 

She took one of his hands and stroked it. ‘What 
do you mean when you say you have pictures like 
‘planning what to do’?”’ she asked. 

“TI mean planning what to do when I get out and 
able to go to work again.” 


ALICE ADAMS 133 


“But that doesn’t need any planning,” Alice said, 
quickly. ‘‘You’re going back to your old place at 
Lamb’s, of course.” 

Adams closed his eyes again, sighing heavily, but 
made no other response. 

“Why, of course you are!’’ she cried. “What are 
you talking about?” 

His head turned slowly toward her, revealing the 
eyes, open in a haggard stare. “I heard you the 
other night when you came from the party,” he said. 
“T know what was the matter.” 

_ “Indeed, you don’t,” she assured him. “You 
don’t know anything about it, because there wasn’t 
anything the matter at all.” 

“Don’t you suppose I heard you crying? What'd 
you cry for if there wasn’t anything the matter?”’ 

“Just nerves, papa. It wasn’t anything else m 
the world.” 

“Never mind,” he said. ‘“ Your mother told me.” 

“She promised me not to!”’ 

At that Adams laughed mournfully. “‘It wouldn’t 
be very likely I'd hear you so upset and not ask 
about it, even if she didn’t come and tell me on her 
own hook. You needn’t try to fool me; I tell you 
I know what was the matter.” 


134 ALICE ADAMS 


“The only matter was I had a silly fit,” Alice 
protested. “It did me good, too.” 

““How’s that?” 

“Because I’ve decided to do something about it, 
papa.” 

“That isn’t the way your mother looks at it,” 
Adams said, ruefully. “She thinks it’s our place to 
do something about it. Well, I don’t know—I 
don’t know; everything seems so changed these 
days. You’ve always been a good daughter, Alice, 
and you ought to have as much as any of these girls 
you go with; she’s convinced me she’s right about 
that. The trouble is ” He faltered, apologetic- 
ally, then went on, “I mean the question is—how to 





get it for you.” 

“No!” she cried. “I had no business to make such 
a fuss just because a lot of idiots didn’t break their 
necks to get dances with me and because I got morti- 
fied about Walter—Walter was pretty terrible——”’ 

“Oh, me, my!” Adams lamented. “I guess 
that’s something we just have to leave work out 
itself. What you going to do with a boy nineteen or 
twenty years old that makes his own living? Can’t 
whip him. Can’t keep him locked up in the house. 
Just got to hope he’ll learn better, I suppose.” 


ALICE ADAMS 135 


“Of course he didn’t want to go to the Palmers’,” 
Alice explained, tolerently—“and as mama and J] 
made him take me, and he thought that was pretty 
selfish in me, why, he felt he had a right to amuse 
himself any way he could. Of course it was awful 
that this—that this Mr. Russell should Oe 
spite of her, the recollection choked her. 

“Yes, it was awful,” Adams agreed. “Just 
awiul. Oh, me, my!” 

But Alice recovered herself at once, and showed 





him a cheerful face. ‘Well, just a few years from 
now I probably won’t even remember it! I believe 
hardly anything amounts to as much as we think it 
does at the time.” 

*““Well—sometimes it don’t.” 

“What DTve been thinking, papa: it seems to . 
me I ought to do something.” 

“What like?” 

She looked dreamy, but was obviously serious as 
she told him: “Well, I mean I ought to be some- 
thing besides just a kind of nobody. I ought te——-* 
She paused. 

“What, dearie?” ; 

“‘Well—there’s one thing I’d like to do. I’m 
sure I could do it, too.” 


136 ALICE ADAMS 


“What?” 

“I want to go on the stage: I know I could act.” 

At this, her father abruptly gave utterance to a 
feeble cackling of laughter; and when Alice, sur- 
prised and a little offended, pressed him for his 
reason, he tried to evade, saying, “Nothing, dearie. 
I just thought of something.” But she persisted 
until he had to explain. 

“It made me think of your mother’s sister, your 
Aunt Flora, that died when you were little,” he said. 
“She was always telling how she was going on the 
stage, and talking about how she was certain she’d 
make a great actress, and all so on; and one day your 
mother broke out and said she ought ’a’ gone on the 
stage, herself, because she always knew she had the 
talent for it—and, well, they got into kind of a 
spat about which one’d make the best actress. I 
had to go out in the hall to laugh!” 

*““Maybe you were wrong,” Alice said, gravely. 
“Tf they both felt it, why wouldn’t that look as if 
there was talent in the family? Mve always 
thought——”” i 

“No, dearie,” he said, with a final chuckle. 
“Your mother and Flora weren’t different from a 
good many others. I expect ninety per cent. of all 














“She looked dreamy but was obviously serious... . ‘I 
want to go on the stage. I know I could act.’ ” 


138 ALICE ADAMS 


I don’t find much inspiration in these provincials. 
I really must ask you not to press me. An artist’s 
time is not her own, though of course I could hardly 
expect you to understand———”’ 

Thus Alice illuminated the dull time; but she: re- 
tired from the interview with her father still man- 
fully displaying an outward cheerfulness, while 
depression grew heavier within, as if she had eaten 
soggy cake. Her father knew nothing whatever of 
the stage, and she was aware of his ignorance, yet for 
some reason his innocently skeptical amusement 
reduced her bright project almost to nothing. Some- 
thing like this always happened, it seemed; she was 
continually making these illuminations, all gay with 
gildings ard colourings; and then as soon as anybody 
else so much as glanced at them—even her father, 
who loved her—the pretty designs were stricken 
with a desolating pallor. “Is this; life?” Alice 
wondered, not doubting that the question was 
original and all her own. “‘Is it life to spend your 
time. imagining things that aren’t so, and never 
will be? Beautiful things happen to other. people; 
why should I be the only one they never can happen 


to?” 
The mood lasted overnight; and was still upon her. 


ALICE ADAMS 139 


the next afternoon when an errand for her father 
took her down-town. Adams had decided to begin 
smoking again, and Alice felt rather degraded, as 
well as embarrassed, when she went into the large 
shop her father had named, and asked for the cheap 
tobacco he used in his pipe. She fell back upon an 
air of amused indulgence, hoping thus to suggest 
that her purchase was made for some faithful old 
retainer, now infirm; and although the calmness 
of the clerk who:served her called for no such elabo- 
ration of her sketch, she ornamented it with a little 
Jaugh and with the remark, as she dropped the 
package into her coat-pocket, “‘I’m sure it’ll please 
him; they tell me it’s the kind he likes.” 

Still playing Lady Bountiful, smiling to herself in 
anticipation of the joy she was bringing to the simple 
old negro or Irish follower of the family, she left the 
shop; but as she came out upon the crowded pave- 
ment her smile vanished quickly. 

Next to the door of the tobacco-shop, there was 
the open entrance to a stairway, and, above this 
rather bleak and dark aperture, a sign-board dis- 
played in begrimed gilt letters the Information that 
Frincke’s Business College occupied the upper 
floors of the building. Furthermore, Frincke here 


140 ALICE ADAMS 


publicly offered “personal instruction and training in 
practical mathematics, bookkeeping, and all branches 
of the business life, including stenography, type- 
writing, etc.” 

Alice halted for a moment, frowning at this sign- 
board as though it were something surprising and 
distasteful which she had never seen before. Yet 
it was conspicuous in a busy quarter; she almost 
always passed it when she came down-town, and 
never without noticing it. Nor was this the first 
time she had paused to lift toward it that same 
glance of vague misgiving. 

The building was not what the changeful city 
defined as a modern one, and the dusty wooden 
stairway, as seen from the pavement, disappeared 
upward into a smoky darkness. So would the 
footsteps of a girl ascending there lead to a hideous 
obscurity, Alice thought; an obscurity as dreary and 
as permanent as death. And like dry leaves falling 
about her she saw her wintry imaginings in the 
May air: pretty girls turning into withered creatures 
as they worked at typing-machines; old maids 
“taking dictation” from men with double chins; 
Alice saw old maids of a dozen different kinds 
“taking dictation.” Her mind’s eye was crowded 


ALICE ADAMS 141 


with them, as it always was when she passed that 
stairway entrance; and though they were all different 
from one another, all of them looked a little like 
herself. 

She hated the place, and yet she seldom hurried 
by it or averted her eyes. It had an unpleasant 
fascination for her, and a mysterious reproach, - 
which she did not seek to fathom. She walked on 
thoughtfully to-day; and when, at the next corner, 
she turned into the street that led toward home, 
she was given a surprise. Arthur Russell came 
rapidly from behind her, lifting his hat as she saw 
him. 

“Are you walking north, Miss Adams?” he 
asked. “Do you mind if I walk with you?” 

She was not delighted, but seemed so. “How 
charming!” she cried, giving him a little flourish of 
the shapely hands; and then, because she wondered 
if he had seen her coming out of the tobacco-shop, 
she laughed and added, “‘I’ve just been on the most 
ridiculous errand!” 

“What was that?” 

“To order some cigars for my father. He’s been 
quite ill, poor man, and he’s so particular—but what 
in the world do I know about cigars?” 


142 ALICE ADAMS 


Russell laughed. “‘ Well, what do you know about 
em? Did you select by the price?” 

“Mercy, no!” she exclaimed, and added, with an 
afterthought, ‘Of course he wrote down the name 
of the kind he wanted and I gave it to the shopman. 
I could never have pronounced it.” 


CHAPTER X 


HER pocket as she spoke her hand rested 
upon the little sack of tobacco, which responded 
accusingly to the touch of her restless fingers; 

and she found time to wonder why she was building 
up this fiction for Mr. Arthur Russell. His dis- 
covery of Walter’s device for whiling away the dull 
evening had shamed and distressed her; but she 
would have suffered no less if almost any other had 
been the discoverer. In this gentleman, after hear- 
ing that he was Mildred’s Mr. Arthur Russell, 
Alice felt not the slightest “personal interest”; and 
there was yet to develop in her life such a thing 
as an interest not personal. At twenty-two this 
state of affairs is not unique. 

So far as Alice was concerned Russell might have 
worn a placard, “Engaged.” She looked upon him 
as diners entering a restaurant look upon tables 
marked “Reserved”’: the glance, slightly discon- 
tented, passes on at once. Or so the eye of a pros- 


pector wanders querulously over staked and estab- 
143 


144 ALICE ADAMS 


lished claims on the mountainside, and seeks the 
virgin land beyond; unless, indeed, the prospector 
be dishonest.. But Alice was no claim-jumper—so 
long as the notice of ownership was plainly posted. 

Though she was indifferent now, habit ruled her: 
and, at the very time she wondered why she created 
fictitious cigars for her father, she was also regretting 
that she had not boldly carried her Malacca stick 
down-town with her. Her vivacity increased auto- 
matically. 

“Perhaps the clerk thought you wanted the 
cigars for yourself,’ Russell suggested. “He may 
have taken you for a Spanish countess.” 

“T’m sure he did!”’ Alice agreed, gaily; and she 
hummed a bar or two of “‘La Paloma,” snapping her 
fingers as castanets, and swaying her body a little, to 
suggest the accepted stencil of a “Spanish Dancer.” 
“Would you have taken me for one, Mr. Russell?” 
she asked, as she concluded the impersonation. 

“I? Why, yes,” he said. “J’d take you for any- 
thing you wanted me to.” 

“Why, what a speech!” she cried, and, laughing, 
gave him a quick glance in which there glimmered 
some real surprise. He was looking at her quizzi- 
cally, but with the liveliest appreciation. Her sur- 


ALICE ADAMS 145 


prise increased; and she was glad that he had joined 
her. 

To be seen walking with such a companion added 
to her pleasure. She would have described him as 
“altogether quite stunning-looking”’; and she liked 
his tall, dark thinness, his gray clothes, his soft 
hat, and his clean brown shoes; she liked his easy 
swing of the stick he carried. 

“Shouldn’t I have said it?” he asked. “Would 
you rather not be taken for a Spanish countess?” 


93 





“That isn’t it,” she explained. “You sai 

“T said I’d take you for whatever you wanted me 
to. Isn’t that all right?” 

“Tt would all depend, wouldn’t it?” 

“Of course it would depend on what you wanted.” 

“Oh, no!” she laughed. “It might depend on a 
lot of things.” 

“Such as?” 

“Well ” She hesitated, having the mischiev- 
‘ous impulse to say, “Such as Mildred!” But she 
decided to omit this reference, and became serious, 





remembering Russell’s service to her at Mildred’s 
house. “Speaking of what I want to be taken for,” 
she said;—‘“‘I’ve been wondering ever since the other 
night what you did take me for! You must have 


146 ALICE ADAMS 


taken me for the sister of a professional gambler, I’m 
afraid!” 

Russell’s look of kindness was the truth about him, 
she was to discover; and he reassured her now by the 
promptness of his friendly chuckle. “Then your 
young brother told you where I fouzxa him, did he? I 
kept my face straight at the time, but I laughed after- 
ward—to myself. It struck me as original, to say 
the least: his amusing himself with those darkies.” 

“Walter zs original,’ Alice said; and, having 
adopted this new view of her brother’s eccentricities, 
she impulsively went on to make it more plausible. 
*““He’s a very odd boy, and I was afraid you’d mis- 
understand. He tells wonderful ‘darky stories,’ 
and he'll do anything to draw coloured people out 
and make them talk; and that’s what he was doing 
at Mildred’s when you found him for me—he says 
he wins their confidence by playing dice with them. 
In the family we think he’ll probably write about 
them some day. He’s rather literary.” 

“Are your”’ Russell asked, smiling. 

“I? Oh ”” . She paused, lifting both hands in 
a charming gesture of helplessness. “Oh, I’m just— 





12? 
. 


me 


His glance followed the lightly waved hands with 


ALICE ADAMS 147 


keen approval, then rose to the lively and colourful 
face, with its hazel eyes, its small and pretty nose, 
and the lip-caught smile which seemed the climax of 
her decorative transition. Never had he seen a 
creature so plastic or so wistful. 

Here was a contrast to his cousin Mildred, who 
was not. wistful, and controlled any impulses toward 
plasticity, if she had them. “By Geerge!”’ he 
said. “But you are different!” 

With that, there leaped in her such an impulse of 
roguish gallantry as she could never resist. She 
turned her head, and, laughing and bright-eyed, 
looked him full in the face. 

“From whom?” she cried. 

“From—everybody!” he said. “‘Are you a mind- 
reader?” 

“Why?” 

“How did you know I was thinking you were 
different from my cousin, Mildred Palmer?” 

“What makes you think I did know it?” 

“Nonsense!” he said. “You knew what I was 
_ thinking and [ knew you knew.” | 

“Yes,” she said with cool humour. “How in- 
timate that seems to make us all at once!” 


Russell left no doubt that he was delighted with 


148 ALICE ADAMS 


these gaieties of hers. “By George!” he exclaimed 
again. “TI thought you were this sort of girl the 
first moment I saw you!”’ 

“What sort of girl? Didn’t Mildred tell you 
what sort of girl I am when she asked you to dance 
with me?” 

“She didn’t ask me to dance with you—I’d been 
looking at you. You were talking to some old 
ladies, and I asked Mildred who you were.” 

“Oh, so Mildred didn’t——”’ Alice checked her- 
self. “Who did she tell you I was?”’ 

“She just said you were a Miss Adams, so I ¢ 

“**A’ Miss Adams?” Alice interrupted. 

“Yes. Then I said I’d like to meet you.” 

“I see. You thought you’d save me from the old 
ladies.” 


“No. I thought I’d save myself from some of the 





girls Mildred was getting me to dance with. There 


3? 





was a Miss Dowling 

“Poor man!” Alice said, gently, and her impulsive 
thought was that Mildred had taken few chances, 
and that as a matter of self-defense her carefulness 
might have been well founded. This Mr. Arthur 
Russell was a much more responsive person than one 
had supposed. 


ALICE ADAMS 149 


“So, Mr. Russell, you don’t know anything 
about me except what you thought when you first 
saw me?” 

“Yes, I know I was right when I thought it.” 

“You haven’t told me what you thought.” 

“IT thought you were like what you are like.” 

“Not very definite, is it? I’m afraid you shed 
more light a minute or so ago, when you said how 
different from Mildred you thought I was. That 
was definite, unfortunately!”’ 

““T didn’t say it,” Russell explained. “I thought 
it; and you read my mind. That’s the sort of 
girl I thought you were—one that could read a 
man’s mind. Why do you say ‘unfortunately’ 
you're not like Mildred?”’ : 

Alice’s smooth gesture seemed to sketch Mildred. 
“Because she’s perfect—why, she’s perfectly perfect! 
She never makes a mistake, and everybody looks up 
to her—oh, yes, we all fairly adore her! She’s 
like some big, noble, cold statue—’way above the 
rest of us—and she hardly ever does anything 
mean or treacherous. Of all the girls I know I 
believe she’s played the fewest really petty tricks. 
She’s © 

Russell interrupted; he looked perplexed. “You 





150 ALICE ADAMS 
say she’s perfectly perfect, but that she does play 


some——”” 

Alice laughed, as if at his sweet innocence. “Men 
are so funny!” she informed him. “Of course girls 
all do mean things sometimes. My own career’s 
just one long brazen smirch of ’em! What I mean 
is, Mildred’s perfectly perfect compared to the rest of 
us.” 

*“T see,” he said, and seemed to need a moment or 
two of thoughtfulness. Then he inquired, ‘‘ What 
sort of treacherous things do you do?” 

“1? Oh, the very worst kind! Most people 
bore me—particularly the men in this town—and 
I show it.” 

“But I shouldn’t call that treacherous, exactly.” 

“Well, they do,” Alice laughed. “It’s made me a 
terribly unpopular character! I do a lot of things 
they hate. For instance, at a dance I'd a lot rather 
find some clever old woman and talk to her than 
dance with nine-tenths of these nonentities. I usu- 
ally do it, teo.” 

“But yeu danced as if you liked it. You danced 
better than any other girl I a 

“‘This flattery of yours doesn’t quite turn my head, 
Mr. Russell,” Alice interrupted. “‘Particularly since 





ALICE ADAMS 151 
Mildred only gave you Ella Dowling to compare 


with me!” 

“Oh, no,” he insisted. “There were others—and 
of course Mildred, herself.”’ 

**Oh, of course, yes. I forgot that. Well * She 
paused, then added, “‘I certainly ought to dance well.” 

“Why is it so much a duty?”’ 

““When I think of the dancing-teachers and the 


expense to papa! All sorts of fancy instructors—I 





suppose that’s what daughters have fathers for, 
though, isn’t it? To throw money away on them?” 
“You don’t 
one of alarm. ‘“‘ You haven’t taken up——” 
She understood his apprehension and responded 
merrily, ““Oh, murder, no! You mean you're afraid 


” Russell began, and his look was 





I break out sometimes in a piece of cheesecloth and 
Tun around a fountain thirty times, and then, for 
an encore, show how much like snakes I can make 
my arms look.” 


4>? 


**I said you were a mind-reader!”’ he exclaimed. 
“That’s exactly what I was pretending to be afraid 
you might do.” 

“Pretending?  That’s nicer of you. No; it’s 
not my mania.” 


“What is?” 


152 ALICE ADAMS 


“Oh, nothing in particular that I know of just 
now. Of course I’ve had the usual one: the one 
that every girl goes through.”’ 

*What’s that?”’ 

“Good heavens, Mr. Russell, you can’t expect 
me to believe you’re really a man of the world if 
you don’t know that every girl has a time in her life 
when she’s positive she’s divinely talented for the 
stage! It’s the only universal rule about women that 
hasn’t got an exception. J don’t mean we all want to 
go on the stage, but we all think we’d be wonderful 
if we did. Even Mildred. Oh, she wouldn’t confess 
it to you: you'd have to know her a great deal bet- 
ter than any man can ever know her to find out.” 

“I see,” he said. ‘‘Girls are always telling us we 


33 





can’t know them. I wonder if you 

She took up his thought before he expressed it, 
and again he was fascinated by her quickness, which 
indeed seemed to him almost telepathic. ‘Oh, 
but don’t we know one another, though!” she cried. 
“Such things we have to keep secret—things that 
go on right before your eyes!” 

“Why don’t some of you tell us?” he asked. 

“We can’t tell you.” 

“Too much honour?” 


ALICE ADAMS 153 


“No. Not even too much honour among thieves, 
Mr. Russell. We don’t tell you about our tricks 
against one another because we know it wouldn’t 
make any impression on you. The tricks aren’t 
played against you, and you have a soft side for cats 
with lovely manners!”’ 

“What about your tricks against us?” 

“Oh, those!” Alice laughed. ‘We think they’re 
rather cute!” 

**Bravo!” he cried, and hammered the ferrule of 
his stick upon the pavement. 

*What’s the applause for?” 

*“For you. What you said was like running up 
the black flag to the masthead.”’ 

“Oh, no. It was just a modest little sign in a 
pretty flower-bed: ‘Gentlemen, beware!” 

“I see I must,” he said, gallantly. 

“Thanks! But I mean, beware of the whole 
bloomin’ garden!” Then, picking up a thread that 
had almost disappeared: “‘ You needn’t think you'll 
ever find out whether I’m right about Mildred’s 
not being an exception by asking her,” she said. 
*“She won’t tell you: she’s not the sort that ever 
makes a confession.” 


But Russell had not followed her shift to the 


154 ALICE ADAMS 


former topic. “‘Mildred’s not being an exception?’ ”’ 





he said, vaguely. “I don’t re 

“An exception about thinking she could be a 
wonderful thing on the stage if she only cared to. 
If you asked her I’m pretty sure she’d say, ‘What 
nonsense!’ Mildred’s the dearest, finest thing any- 
where, but you won’t find out many things about 
her by asking her.” 

Russell’s expression became more serious, as it did 
whenever his cousin was made their topic. “You 
think not?” he said. “You think she’s 4 


“No. But it’s not because she isn’t sincere 





exactly. It’s only because she has such a lot to 
live up to. She has to live up to being a girl on the 
grand style—to herself, I mean, of course.’’ And 
without pausing Alice rippled on, “You ought to 
have seen me when I had the stage-fever! I used 
to play ‘Juliet’ all alone in my room.’ She lifted 


her arms in graceful entreaty, pleading musically, 


“OQ, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, 
That monthly changes in her circled orb, 
Lest thy love prove——” 
She broke off abruptly with a little flourish, 
snapping thumb and finger of each outstretched 
hand, then laughed and said, “Papa used to make 


ALICE ADAMS 155 


such fun of me! Thank heaven, I was only fifteen; 
I was all over it by the next year.” 

**No wonder you had the fever,” Russell observed. 
“You doit beautifully. Why didn’t you finish the line?”’ 

“Which one? ‘Lest thy love prove likewise’ 
variable’? Juliet was saying it to a man, you 
know. She seems to have been ready to worry 
about his constancy pretty early in their affair!” 

Her companion was again thoughtful. “Yes,” 
he said, seeming to be rather irksomely impressed 
with Alice’s suggestion. “Yes; it does appear so.” 

Alice glanced at his serious face, and yielded to an 
audacious temptation. “‘You mustn’t take it so 
hard,” she said, flippantly. “It isn’t about you: it’s 
only about Romeo and Juliet.” 

“See here!” he exclaimed. “You aren’t at your 
mind-reading again, are you? ‘There are times 
when it won’t do, you know!” 

She leaned toward him a little, as if companion- 
ably: they were walking slowly, and this geniality 
of hers brought her shoulder in light contact with his 
fora moment. “Do you dislike my mind-reading?” 
she asked, and, across their two just touching 
shoulders, gave him her sudden look of smiling 
wistfulness. ‘Do you hate it?”’ 


156 ALICE ADAMS 


He shook his head. ‘“‘No, I don’t,” he said, 
gravely. “It’s quite—pleasant. But I think it 
says, ‘Gentlemen, beware!’”’ 

She instantly moved away from him, with the 
lawless and frank laugh of one who is delighted to 
be caught in a piece of hypocrisy. “How lovely!” 
she cried. Then she pointed ahead. “Our walk 
is nearly over. We're coming to the foolish little 
house where I live. It’s a queer little place, but 
my father’s so attached to it the family have about 
given up hope of getting him to build a real house 
farther out. He doesn’t mind our being extrava- 
gant about anything else, but he won’t let us alter 
one single thing about his precious little old house. 
Well!” She halted, and gave him her hand. 
** Adieu!”” 

“I couldn’t,” he began; hesitated, then asked: 
“*T couldn’t come in with you for a little while?” 

“Not now,” she said, quickly. “You can 
come———”’ Shr paused. 

When?” 

“Almost any time.” She turned and walked 
slowly up the path, but he waited. “‘ You can come 
in the evening if you like,” she called back to him 
over her shoulder. 


ALICE ADAMS 157 


Soon?” 

**As soon as you like!’”? She waved her hand; 
then ran indoors and watched him from a window 
as he went up the street. He walked rapidly, a 
fine, easy figure, swinging his stick in a way that 
suggested exhilaration. Alice, staring after him 
through the irregular apertures of a lace curtain, 
showed no similar buoyancy. Upon the instant she 
closed the door all sparkle left her: she had become 
at once the simple and sometimes troubled girl 
her family knew. 

*“What’s going on out there?”’ her shidihees asked, 
approaching from the dining-room. 

“Oh, nothing,” Alice said, indifferently, as she 
turned away. “That Mr. Russell met me down- 
town and walked up with me.” 

“Mr. Russell? Oh, the one that’s engaged to 
Mildred?” | 

“Well—I don’t know for certain. He didn’t 
seem so much like an engaged man to me.” And 
she added, in the tone of thoughtful preoccupation: 
“ Anyhow—not so terribly!” 

Then she ran upstairs, gave her father his tobacco, 
filled his pipe for him, and petted him as he lighted it. 


CHAPTER XI 


FTER that, she went to her room and sat 
down before her three-leaved mirror. There 
was where she nearly always sat when she 

came into her room, if she had nothing in mind to 
do. She went to that chair as naturally as a dog 
goes to his corner. 

She leaned forward, observing her profile; gravity 
seemed to be her mood. But after a long, almost 
motionless scrutiny, she began to produce dramatic 
sketches upon that ever-ready stage, her counte- 
nance: she showed gaiety, satire, doubt, gentleness, 
appreciation of a companion and _ love-in-hiding— 
all studied in profile first, then repeated for a “‘three- 
quarter view.” Subsequently she ran through them, 
facing herself in full. 

In this manner she outlined a playful scenario 
for her next interview with Arthur Russell; but 
grew solemn again, thinking of the impression she 
had already sought to give him. She had no 


twinges for any underminings of her “most inti- 
158 


ALICE ADAMS 159 


mate friend”’—in fact, she felt that her work on a 
new portrait of Mildred for Mr. Russell had been 
honest and accurate. But why had it been her 
instinct to show him an Alice Adams who didn’t 
exist? 

Almost everything she had said to him was upon 
spontaneous impulse, springing to her lips on the 
instant; yet it all seemed to have been founded 
upon a careful design, as if some hidden self kept 
such designs in stock and handed them up to. her, 
ready-made, to be used for its own purpose. What 
appeared to be the desired result was « false-coloured 
image in Russell’s mind; but if he liked that image 
he wouldn’t be liking Alice Adams; nor would any- 
thing he thought about the image be a thought about 
her. Nevertheless, she knew she would go on with 
her false, fancy colourings of this nothing as soon 
as she saw him again; she had just been practising 
them. “What’s the idea?” she wondered. “What 
makes me tell such lies? Why shouldn’t I be just 
myself?’’ And then she thought, “But which one 
is myself?” ) 

Her eyes dwelt on the solemn eyes in the mirror; 
and her lips, disquieted by a deepening wonder, 
parted to whisper: 


160 ALICE ADAMS 


“Who in the world are you?” 

The apparition before her had obeyed her like an 
alert slave, but now, as she subsided to a complete 
stillness, that aspect changed to the old mockery 
with which mirrors avenge their wrongs. The 
nucleus of some queer thing seemed to gather and 
shape itself behind the nothingness of the reflected 
eyes until it became almost an actual strange 
presence. If it could be identified, perhaps the 
presence was that of the hidden designer who 
handed up the false, ready-made pictures, and, for 
unknown purposes, made Alice exhibit them; but 
whatever it was, she suddenly found it monkey- 
like and terrifying. In a flutter she jumped up and 
went to another part of the room. 

A moment or two later she was whistling softly as 
she hung her light coat over a wooden triangle in her 
closet, and her musing now was quainter than the 
experience that led to it; for what she thought was 
this, “I certainly am a queer girl!” She took a 
little pride in so much originality, believing herself 
probably the only person in the world to have such 
thoughts as had been hers since she entered the room, 
and the first to be disturbed by a strange presence in 
the mirror. In fact, the effect of the tiny episode 


ALICE ADAMS 161 


became apparent in that look of preoccupied com- 
placency to be seen for a time upon any girl who has 
-found reason to suspect that she is a being without 
counterpart. 

This slight glow, still faintly radiant, was observed 
across the dinner-table by Walter, but he mis- 
interpreted it. ‘‘What you lookin’ so self-satisfied 
about?” he inquired, and added in his knowing way: 
“TI saw you, all right, cutie!” 

*“Where’d you see me?” 

*Down-town.” 

“This afternoon, you mean, Walter?” 

“Yes, ‘this afternoon, I mean, Walter,’”’ he 
returned, burlesquing her voice at least happily 
enough to please himself; for he laughed applausively. 
**Oh, you never saw me! I passed you close enough 
to pull a tooth, but you were awful busy. I never 
did see anybody as busy as you get, Alice, when 
you're towin’ a barge. My, but you keep your 
hands goin’! Looked like the air was full of ’em! 
That’s why I’m onto why you look so tickled this 
evening; I saw you with that big fish.” 

Mrs. Adams laughed benevolently; she was not 
displeased with this rallying. ‘‘Well, what of it, 
Walter?” she asked. “If you happen to see your 


162 ALICE ADAMS 


sister on the street when some nice young man is 


93 





being attentive to her 

Walter barked and then cackled. ‘‘ Whoa, Sal!” 
he said. “‘You got the parts mixed. It’s little 
Alice that was ‘being attentive.’ I know the big fish 
she was attentive to, all right, too.” 

“Yes,” his sister retorted, quietly. “I should 
chink you might have recognized him, Walter.” 

Walter looked annoyed. “Still harpin’ on that!’ 
he complained. “The kind of women I like, if they 
get sore they just hit you somewhere on the face and 
then they’re through. By the way, I heard this 
Russell was supposed to be your dear, old, sweet 
friend Mildred’s steady. What you doin’ walkin’ as 
close to him as all that?” 

Mrs. Adams addressed her son in gentle reproof, 
“Why Walter!” 

““Oh, never mind, mama,” Alice said. ‘‘To the 
horrid all things are horrid.” 
“Get out!” Walter protested, carelessly. “I 
heard all about this Russell down at the shop. 
Young Joe Lamb’s such a talker I wonder he don’t 
ruin his grandfather’s business; he keeps all us cheap 
help standin’ round listening to him nine-tenths of 
our time. Well, Joe told me this Russell’s some kin 


ALICE ADAMS 163 


er other to the Palmer family, and he’s got some 
little money of his own, and he’s puttin’ it into ole 
Palmer’s trust company and Palmer’s goin’ to make 
him a vice-president of the company. Sort of a keep- 
the-money-in-the-family arrangement, Joe Lamb 
says.” 

Mrs. Adams looked thoughtful. “I don’t see——’’ 
she began. | 

“Why, this Russell’s supposed to be tied up to 
Mildred,” her son explained. “‘When ole Palmer 
dies this Russell will be his son-in-law, and all he’ll 
haf’ to do’ll be to barely lift his feet and step into the 
ole man’s shoes. It’s certainlya mighty fat hand-me- 
out for this Russell! You better lay off o’ there, Alice. 
Pick somebody that’s got less to lose and you'll make 
2 better showing.” 

Mrs. Adams’s air of thoughtfulness had not de- 
parted. “But you say this Mr. Russell is well off 
on his own account, Walter.” 

“Oh, Joe Lamb says he’s got some little of his own. 
Didn’t know how much.” , 

“Well, then ‘i 

Walter laughed his laugh. “Cut it out,” he bade 
her. “Alice wouldn’t run in fourth place.” 

Alice had been looking at him in a detached way, 





164 ALICE ADAMS 


ac though estimating the value of a specimen in a 
collection not her own. “‘Yes,”’ she said, indiffer- 
ently. “You really are vulgar, Walter.” 

He had finished his meal; and, rising, he came 
round the table to her and patted her good-naturedly 
on the shoulder. ‘“‘Good ole Allie!” he said. ‘“‘Hon- 
est, you wouldn’t run in fourth place. If I was you 
I’d never even start in the class. That frozen-face 
gang will rule you off the track soon as they see 
your colours.” 

“Walter!” his mother said again. 

“Well, ain’t I her brother?” he returned, seeming 
to be entirely serious and direct, for the moment, at 
least. “J like the ole girl all right. Fact is, some- 
times I’m kind of sorry for her.” 

*“But what’s it all about?” Alice cried. ‘“‘Simply 
because you met me down-town with a man I never 
saw but once before and just barely know! Why all 
this palaver?” 

*““Why?’” he repeated, grinning. “Well, I’ve 
seen you start before, you know!” He went to the 
door, and paused. “I got no date to-night. Take 
you to the movies, you care to go.” 

She declined crisply. “‘No, thanks!’ 

*“Come on,” he said, as pleasantly as he knew how. 


) 


ALICE ADAMS 165 


“Give me a chance to show you a better time than we 
had up at that frozen-face joint. Ill get you some 
chop suey afterward.” 

**No, thanks!” 

“All right,” he responded and waved a flippant 
adieu. “As the barber says, “The better the advice, 
the worse it’s wasted!’ Good-night !” 

Alice shrugged her shoulders; but a moment or two 
later, as the jar of the carelessly slammed front door 
went through the house, she shook her head, re- 
considering. ‘Perhaps I ought to have gone with 
him. It might have kept him away from whatever 
dreadful people are his friends—at least for one 
night.” 

“Oh, I’m sure Walter’s a good boy,’’ Mrs. Adams 
said, soothingly; and this was what she almost al- 
ways said when either her husband or Alice ex- 
pressed such misgivings. ‘“He’s odd, and he’s picked 
up right queer manners; but that’s only because we 
haven’t given him advantages like the other young 
men. But I’m sure he’s a good boy.” 

She reverted to the subject a little later, while she 
washed the dishes and Alice wiped them. “Of 
course Walter could take his place with the other nice 
boys of the town even yet,” she said. “I mean, if: 


166 ALICE ADAMS 
we could afford to help him financially. They all 


93 





belong to the country clubs and have cars and 

*‘Let’s don’t go into that any more, mama,”’ the 
daughter begged her. ‘What’s the use?” 

“It could be of use,” Mrs. Adams insisted. “It 
could if your father——” 

“But papa can’t.” 

“Yes, he can.” 

“But how can he? He told me a man of his age 
ean’t give up a business he’s been in practically all his 
life, and just go groping about for something that 
might never turn up at all. I think he’s right about 
it, too, of course!” 

Mrs. Adams splashed among the plates with a new 
vigour heightened by an old bitterness. “Oh, yes,” 
she said. ‘‘He talks that way; but he knows better.” 

““How could he ‘know better,’ mama?” 

‘He knows how!” 

“But what does he know?” 

Mrs. Adams tossed her head. “You don’t sup- 
pose I’m such a fool I'd be urging him to give up 
something for nothing, do you, Alice? Do you sup- 
pose I’d want him to just go ‘groping around’ like he 
was telling you? That would be crazy, of course. 
Little as his work at Lamb’s brings in, I wouldn’t be 


ALICE ADAMS 167 


so silly as to ask him to give it up just on a chance he 
could find something else. Good gracious, Alice, you 
must give me credit for a little intelligence once in a 
while!” 

Alice was puzzled. ‘‘But what else could there be 
except a chance? I don’t peel —neaii! 

“Well, I do,” her mother interrupted, decisively. 
**That man could make us all well off right now if he 
wanted to. We could have been rich long ago if he’d 
ever really felt as he ought to about his family.” 

“What! Why, how could 

“You know how as well as I do,’’ Mrs. Adams said, 
crossly. “I guess you haven’t forgotten how he 





treated me about it the Sunday before he got sick.” 

She went on with her work, putting into it a sudden 
violence inspired by the recollection; but Alice, en- 
lightened, gave utterance to a laugh of lugubrious 
derision. ‘Oh, the glue factory again!’ she cried. 
‘How silly!’ And she renewed her laughter. 

So often do the great projects of parents appear 
ignominious to their children. Mrs. Adams’s con: 
ception of a glue factory as a fairy godmother of this 
family was an absurd old story which Alice had never 
taken seriously. She remembered that when she 
was about fifteen her mother began now and then to 


168 ALICE ADAMS 


say sume*thing to Adams about a “glue factory,” 
rather timidly, and as a vague suggestion, but never 
without irritating him. Then, for years, the pre- 
posterous subject had not been mentioned; possibly 
because of some explosion on the part of Adams, 
when his daughter had not been present. But 
during the last year Mrs. Adams had quietly gone 
back to these old hints, reviving them at intervals and 
also reviving her husband’s irritation. Alice’s bored 
impression was that her mother wanted him to 
found, or buy, or do something, or other, about a 
glue factory; and that he considered the proposal so 
impracticable as to be insulting. The parental con- 
versations took place when neither Alice nor Walter 
was at hand, but sometimes Alice had come in upon 
the conclusion of one, to find her father in a shouting 
mood, and shocking the air behind him with profane 
monosyllables as he departed. Mrs. Adams would 
be left quiet and troubled; and when Alice, sympa- 
thizing with the goaded man, inquired of her mother 
why these tiresome bickerings had been renewed, she 
always got the brooding and cryptic answer, “He 
could do it—if he wanted to.” Alice failed to com- 
prehend the desirability of a glue factory—to her 
mind a father engaged in a glue factory lacked 





ALICE ADAMS 169 


impressiveness; had no advantage over a father 
employed by Lamb and Company; and she supposed 
that Adams knew better than her mother whether 
such an enterprise would be profitable or not. 
Emphatically, he thought it would not, for she had 
heard him shouting at the end of one of these painful 
interviews, “You can keep up your dang talk till you 
die and I die, but [’ll never make one God’s cent 
that way!” 

There had been a culmination. Returning from 
church on the Sunday preceding the collapse with 
which Adams’s illness had begun, Alice found her 
mother downstairs, weeping and intimidated, while 
her father’s stamping footsteps were loudly audible 
as he strode up and down his room overhead. So 
were his endless repetitions of invective loudly 
audible: “That woman! Oh, that woman! Oh, that 
danged woman!” 

Mrs. Adams admitted to her daughter that it was 
“the old glue factory”? and that her husband’s wild- 
ness had frightened her into a “solemn promise” 
never to mention the subject again so long as she had 
breath. Alice laughed. The “glue factory” idea 
was not only a bore, but ridiculous, and her mother’s 
evident seriousness about it one of those inexplicable 


170 ALICE ADAMS 


vagaries we sometimes discover in the people we 
know best. Dut this Sunday rampage appeared to 
be the end of it, and when Adams came down to 
dinner, an hour later, he was unusually cheerful. 
Alice was glad he had gone wild enough to settle the 
glue factory once and for all; and she had ceased to 
think of the episode long before Friday of that week, 
when Adams was brought home in the middle of 
the afternoon by his old employer, the “great J. A. 
Lamb,” in the latter’s car. 

During the long illness the “glue factory” was 
completely forgotten, by Alice at least; and her laugh 
was rueful as well as derisive now, in the kitchen, 
when she realized that her mother’s mind again 
dwelt upon this abandoned nuisance. “I thought 


4 


you'd got over all that nonsense, mama,” she said. 

Mrs. Adams smiled, pathetically. “Of course you 
think it’s nonsense, dearie. Young people think 
everything’s nonsense that they don’t know anything 
about.” 

“Good gracious!”’ Alice cried. “I should think 
T used to hear enough about that horrible old glue 
factory to know something about it!” 

“No,” her mother returned patiently. ‘“You’ve 


never heard anything about it at all.” 


ALICE ADAMS 171 


“T haven’t?” 

“No. Your father and I didn’t discuss it before 
you children. All you ever heard was when he’d get 
in such a rage, after we'd been speaking of it, that he 
couldn’t control himself when you camein. Wasn’t I 
always quiet? Did J ever go on talking about it?” 

“No; perhaps not. But you’re talking about it 
now, mama, after you promised never te mention it 
again.” 

“IT promised not to mention it to your father,” 
said Mrs. Adams, gently. “I haven’t mentioned it 
to him, have I?” 

**Ah, but if you mention it to me I’m afraid you 
will mention it to him. You always do speak of 
things that you have on your mind, and you might 





get papa all stirred up again about ” Alice paused, 
a light of divination flickering in her eyes. “Oh!” 
she cried. “TI see!” 

“What do you see?”’ 

“You have been at him about it!”’ 

“Not one single word!” 

“No!” Alice cried. ‘“‘Not a word, but that’s what 
you've meant all along! You haven’t spoken the 
words to him, but all this urging him to change, to 
‘find something better to go into’—it’s all been about 


172 ALICE ADAMS 


nothing on earth but your foolish old glue factory 
that you know upsets him, and you gave your 
solemn word never to speak to him about again! 
You didn’t say it, but you meant it—and he knows 
that’s what you meant! Oh, mama!” 

Mrs. Adams, with her hands still automatically at 
work in the flooded dishpan, turned to face her 
daughter. “Alice,” she said, tremulously, “what 
do I ask for myself?” 

“What?” 

**I say, What do I ask for myself? Do you sup- 
pose J want anything? Don’t you know Id be 
perfectly content on your father’s present income 
if I were the only person to be considered? What do 
I care about any pleasure for myself? Id be willing 
never to have a maid again; J don’t mind doing the 
work. If we didn’t have any children I’d be glad to 
do your father’s cooking and the housework and the 
washing and ironing, too, for the rest of my life. I 
wouldn’t care. I’m a poor cook and a poor house- 
keeper; I don’t do anything well; but it would be 
good enough for just him and me. I wouldn’t ever 


29 





utter one word of com 
“Qh, goodness!” Alice lamented. “What zs it 
all about?” 


ALICE ADAMS 173 


“Tt’s about this,” said Mrs. Adams, swallowing. 
“You and Walter are a new generation and you 
ought to have the same as the rest of the new gene- 
ration get. Poor Walter—asking you to go to the 
movies and a Chinese restaurant: the best he had to 
offer! Don’t you suppose J see how the poor boy is 
deteriorating? Don’t you suppose I know what 
you have to go through, Alice? And when I think of 
that man upstairs The agitated voice grew 
louder. “When I think of him and know that noth- 
ing in the world but his stubbornness keeps my 
children from having all they want and what they 





ought to have, do you suppose I’m going to hold my- 
self bound to keep to the absolute letter of a silly 
promise he got from me by behaving like a crazy 
man? lIcan’t! I can’t doit! No mother could sit 
by and see him lock up a horn of plenty like that in 
his closet when the children were starving!”’ 


#?? 


“Oh, goodness, goodness me!” Alice protested. 
“We aren’t precisely ‘starving,’ are we?”’ 

Mrs. Adams began to weep. “It’s just the same. 
_Didn’t I see how flushed and pretty you looked, this 
afternoon, after you’d been walking with this young 
man that’s come here? Do you suppose he’d look at 


a girl like Mildred Palmer if you had what yon ought 


174 ALICE ADAMS 
to have? Do you suppose he’d be going into busi- 


3? 


ness with her father if your father 





“Good heavens, mama; you’re worse than Walter: 
I just barely know the man! Don’t be so absurd!” 


999 


“Yes, I’m always ‘absurd,’’’ Mrs. Adams moaned. 
“All T can do is ery, while your father sits upstairs, 
and his horn of plenty-———”’ 

But Alice interrupted with a peal of: desperate 
laughter. “Oh, that ‘horn of plenty!’ Do come 
down to earth, mama. How can you call a glue 
factory, that doesn’t exist except in your mind, a 
‘horn of plenty’? Do let’s be a little rational!” 

“It could be a horn of plenty,” the tearful Mrs, 
Adams insisted. “It could! You don’t under- 
stand a thing about it.” 

“Well, I’m willing,” Alice said, with tired skepti- 
cism. “*‘Make me understand, then. Where'd you 
ever get the idea?’ 

Mrs. Adams withdrew her hands from the water, 
dried them on a towel, and then wiped her eyes with 


‘ a handkerchief. ‘‘ Your father could make a fortune 


if he wanted to,” she said, quietly. “At least, I don’t 
say a fortune, but anyhow a great deal more than he 
does make.” 


“Yes, I’ve heard that before, mama, and you 


ALICE ADAMS 175 


think he could make it out of a glue factory. What 
I’m asking is: How?” 

“How? Why, by making glue and selling it. 
Don’t you know how bad most glue is when you try 
to mend anything? A good glue is one of the rarest 
things there is; and it would just sell itself, once it 
got started. Well, your father knows how to make 
as good a glue as there is in the world.” 

Alice was not interested. ‘What ofit? Isuppose 
probably anybody could make it if they wanted to.” 

“T said you didn’t know anything about it. No- 
body else could make it. Your father knows a 
formula for making it.” 

“What of that?” 

“It’s a secret formula. It isn’t even down on 
paper. It’s worth any amount of money.” 

‘Any amount?’”’ Alice said, remaimimg incredu-. 
lous. ‘‘Why hasn’t papa sold it then?” 

“Just because he’s too stubborn to do anything 
with it at all!” 

*“How did papa get it?” 

“He got it before you were born, just after we were 
married. I didn’t think much about it then: it 
wasn’t till you were growing up and I saw how much 
we needed money that I s 





176 ALICE ADAMS 


“Yes, but how did papa get it?”’ Alice began to 
feel a little more curious about this possible buried 
treasure. ‘‘Did he invent it?” 

“Partly,” Mrs. Adams said, looking somewhat 
preoccupied. “He and another man invented it.” 


99 





“Then maybe the other man 

**He’s dead.” 

“Then his fami! . 

I don’t think he left any family,’’ Mrs. Adams said. 
“Anyhow, it belongs to your father. At least it be- 
longs to him as much as it does to any one else. He’s 





got an absolutely perfect right todo anything he wants 
to with it, and it would make us all comfortable if he’d 
do what I want him to—and he knows it would, too!” 

Alice shook her head pityingly. “Poor mama!” 
she said. ‘‘Of course he knows it wouldn’t do any- 
thing of the kind, or else he’d have done it long ago.”’ 

“He would, you say?” her mother cried. ‘That 
only shows how little you know him!” 

“Poor mama!” Alice said again, soothingly. “‘If 
papa were like what you say he is, he’d be—why, 
he’d be crazy!” 

Mrs. Adams agreed with a vehemence near pas- 
sion. “‘You’re right about him for once: that’s just 
what he is! He sits up there in his stubbornness and- 


ALICE ADAMS 177 


lets us slave here in the kitchen when if he wanted 
to—if he’d so much as lift his little finger——”’ 

“Oh, come, now!” Alice laughed. “You can’t 
build even a glue factory with just one little finger.” 

Mrs. Adams seemed about to reply that finding 
fault with a figure of speech was beside the point; but 
a ringing of the front door bell forestalled the retort. 
““Now, who do you suppose that is?”’ she wondered 
aloud; then her face brightened. ‘“‘Ah—did Mr. 
Russell ask if he could “ 

**No, he wouldn’t be coming this evening,” Alice 
said. “Probably it’s the great J. A. Lamb: he 
usually stops for a minute on Thursdays to ask how 





papa’s getting along. I'll go.” 

She tossed her apron off, and as she went through 
the house her expression was thoughtful. She was 
thinking vaguely about the glue factory and wonder- 
ing if there might be “‘something in it”’ after all. If 
her mother was right about the rich possibilities of 
Adams’s secret—but that was as far as Alice’s specu- 
lations upon the matter went at this time: they were 
checked, partly by the thought that her father prob- 
ably hadn’t enough money for such an enterprise, 
and partly by the fact that she had arrived at the 
front door. 


CHAPTER XII 


4 “HE fine old gentleman revealed when she 
opened the door was probably the last great 
merchant in America to wear the chin beard. 

White as white frost, it was trimmed short with ex- 

quisite precision, while his upper lip and the lower 

expanses of his cheeks were clean and rosy from fresh 
shaving. With this trim white chin beard, the white 
waistcoat, the white tie, the suit of fine gray cloth, 
the broad and brilliantly polished black shoes, and the 
wide-brimmed gray felt hat, here was a man who had 
found his style in the seventies of the last century, 
and thenceforth kept it. Files of old magazines 
of that period might show him, in woodcut, as, 

“Type of Boston Merchant”. Nast might have 

drawn him as an honest statesman. He was eighty, 

hale and sturdy, not aged; and his quick blue eyes, 
still unflecked, and as brisk as a boy’s, saw every- 
thing. 

“Well, well, well!” he said, heartily. “You 


haven’t lost any of your good looks since last week, 
178 


ALICE ADAMS 179 


I see, Miss Alice, so I guess I’m to take it you haven’t 
been worrying over your daddy. The young feller’s 
getting along all right, is he?” 

*“‘He’s much better; he’s sitting up, Mr. Lamb. 
Won’t you come in?” 

“Well, I don’t know but I might.”” He turned to 
call toward twin disks of light at the curb, “Be out in 
a minute, Billy”; and the silhouette of a chauffeur 
standing beside a car could be seen to salute in 
response, as the old gentleman stepped into the hall. 
“You don’t suppose your daddy’s receiving callers 
yet, is he?” 

““He’s a good deal stronger than he was when you 
were here last week, but I’m afraid he’s not very 
presentable, though.” 

***Presentable?’”’ The old man echoed her jovially. 
“Pshaw! Ive seen lots of sick folks. J know what 
they look like and how they love to kind of nest in 
among a pile of old blankets and wrappers. Don’t 
you worry about that, Miss Alice, if you think he’d 
like to see me.” . 

“Of course he would—if——” Alice hesitated; 
then said quickly,“‘Of course he’d love to see you and | 
he’s quite able to, if you care to come up.” 

She ran up the stairs ahead of him, and had time to 


180 ALICE ADAMS 


Ss 


snatch the crocheted wrap from her father’s shoul-— 


ders. Swathed as usual, he was sitting beside a> 


table, reading the evening paper; but when his 


employer appeared in the doorway he haif rose as if 
to come forward in greeting. 

“Sit still!” the old gentleman shouted. ‘What 
do you mean? Don’t you know you're weak as a 
cat? D’you think a man can be sick as long as you 
have and not be weak asacat? What you trying to 
do the polite with me for?” 

Adams gratefully protracted the handshake that 
accompanied these inquiries. “This is certainly 
mighty fine of you, Mr. Lamb,” he said. “I guess 
Alice has told you how much our whole family 
appreciate your coming here so regularly to see how 
this old bag o’ bones was getting along. Haven’t 
you, Alice?” 

“Yes, papa,” she said; and turned to go out, but 
Lamb checked her. . 

“Stay right here, Miss Alice; I’m not even going 
to sit down. I know how it upsets sick folks when 
people outside the family come in for the first time.” 

“You don’t upset me,” Adams said. “I'll feel a 
lot better for getting a glimpse of you, Mr. Lamb.” 

_ The visitor’s laugh was husky, but hearty and re- 





ALICE ADAMS 181 


: assuring, like his voice in speaking. ‘“‘That’s the 
way all my boys blarney me, Miss Alice,” he said. 
_ “They think [ll make the work lighter on ’em if they 
can get me kind of flattered up. You just tell your 
daddy it’s no use; he doesn’t get on my soft side, pre- 
tending he likes to see me even when he’s sick.” 

“Oh, I’m not so sick any more,” Adams said. “I 
expect to be back in my place ten days from now at 
the longest.” 

“Well, now, don’t hurry it, Virgil; don’t hurry it. 
You take your time; take your time.” 

This brought to Adams’s lips a feeble smile not 
lacking in a kind of vanity, as feeble. “‘Why?” he 
asked. “I suppose you think my department runs 
itself down there, do you?”’ 

His employer’s response was another husky laugh. 
“Well, well, well!’ he cried, and patted Adams’s 
shoulder with a strong pink hand. “Listen to this 
young feller, Miss Alice, will you! He thinks we 
can’t get along without hima minute! Yes, sir, this 
daddy of yours believes the whole works ’Il just take 
_ and run down if he isn’t there to keep ’em wound up. 
I always suspected he thought a good deal of ascisett, 
and now I know he does!” 

Adams looked troubled. “Well, I don’t like to 


182 ALICE ADAMS 


feel that my salary’s going on with me not earning 
sg 

_ “Listen to him, Miss Alice! Wouldn’t you think, 
now, he’d let me be the one to worry about that? 
Why, on my word. if your daddy had his way, I 
wouldn’t be anywhere. He’d take all my worrying 
and everything else off my shoulders and shove me 
right out of Lamb and Company! He would!” 

“It seems to me I’ve been soldiering on you a 
pretty long while, Mr. Lamb,” the convalescent said, 
querulously. “I don’t feel right about it; but I'll 
be back in ten days. You'll see.” 

The old man took his hand in parting. “All right; 
we'll see, Virgil. Of course we do need you, seriously 
speaking; but we don’t need you so bad we'll let you 
come down there before you’re fully fit and able.” 
He went to the door. “You hear, Miss Alice? 
That’s what I wanted to make the old feller under- 
stand, and what I want you to kind of enforce on 
him. The old place is there waiting for him, and it’d 
wait ten years if it took him that long to get good and 
well. You see that he remembers it, Miss Alice!” 

She went down the stairs with him, and he con- 
tinued to impress this upon her until he had gone out. 
of the front door. And even after that, the husky 


ALICE ADAMS 183 


voice called back from the darkness, as he went to his 
cat, “Don’t forget, Miss Alice; let him take his own 
time. We always want him, but we want him to get 
good and weil iirst. Good-night, good-nizht, young 
lady!” 

When she closed the door her mother came from 
the farther end of the “living-room,” wuere there was 
no light; and Alice turned to her. | 

“TI can’t help liking that old man, mama,” she 
said. ‘“‘He always sounds so—well, so solid and 
honest and friendly! I do like him.” 

But Mrs. Adams failed in sympathy upon this 
point. ‘‘He didn’t say anything about raising your 
father’s salary, did he?”’ she asked, dryly. 

“No,” 

“No. I thought not.” 

She would have said more, but Alice, indisposed 
to listen, began to whistle, ran up the stairs, and went 
to sit with her father. She found him bright-eyed 
with the excitement a first caller brings into a slow 
convalescence: his cheeks showed actual hints of 
colour; and he was smiling tremulou_ly as he filled 
and lit his pipe. She brought the crocheted scarf and 
put it about his shoulders again, then too's a chair 
near him. 


184 ALICE ADAMS 
“I believe seeing Mr. Lamb did do you goad, 


papa,” she said. “I sort of thought it might, and 
that’s why I let him come up. You really look a 
little like your old self again.” 

Adams exhaled a breathy “Ha!” with the smoke 
from his pipe as he waved the match to extinguish 
it. “‘That’s fine,” he said. ‘“‘The smoke I had 
before dinner didn’t taste the way it used to, and I 
kind of wondered if I’d lost my liking for tobacco, but 
this one seems to be all right. You bet it did me 
good to see J. A. Lamb! He’s the biggest man that’s 
‘ever lived in this town or ever will live here; and you 
can take all the Governors and Senators or anything 
they’ve raised here, and put ’em in a pot with him, 
and they won’t come out one-two-three alongside o’ 
him! And to think as big a man as that, with all his 
interests and everything he’s got on his mind—to 
think he’d never let anything prevent him from com- 
ing here once every week to ask how I was getting 
along, and then walk right upstairs and kind of call 
on me, as it were—well, it makes me sort of feel as 
if I wasn’t so much of a nobody, so to speak, as your 
mother seems to like to make out sometimes.” 

“How foolish, papa! Of course you're nct ‘a 
nobody.’” 


ALICE ADAMS 185 


Adams chuckled faintly upon his pipe-stem, what 
vanity he had seeming to be further stimulated by 
his daughter’s applause. “I guess there aren’t a 
whole lot of people in this town that could claim 
J. A. showed that much interest in ’em,” he said. 
“Of course I don’t set up to believe it’s all because of 
merit, or anything like that.. He’d do the same for 
anybody else that’d been with the company as long 
as I have, but still it 2s something to be with the com- 
pany that long and have him show he appreciates it.” 

“Yes, indeed, it is, papa.” : 

“Yes, sir,’ Adams said, reflectively.. “Yes, sir, I 
guess that’s so. And besides, it all goes to show the 
kind of a man he is. Simon pure, that’s what that 
man is, Alice. Simon pure! There’s never been 
anybody work for him that didn’t respect him more ~ 
than they did any other man in the world, I guess. 
And when you work for him you know he respects 
you, too. Right from the start you get the feeling 
that J. A. puts absolute confidence in you; and that’s 
mighty stimulating: it makes you want to show him 
he hasn’t misplaced it. There’s great big moral 
values to the way a man like him gets you to feeling - 
about your relations with the business: it ain’t all 
just dollars and cents—not by any means!” 


186 ALICE ADAMS 


He was silent for a time, then returned with in- 
creasing enthusiasm to this theme, and Alice was 
glad to see so much renewal of life in him; he had 
not spoken with a like cheerful vigour since before his 
illness. The visit of his idolized great man had in- 
deed been good for him, putting new spirit into him; 
and liveliness cf the body followed that of the spirit. 
His improvement carried over the night: he slept 
well and awoke late, declaring that he was “pretty 
near a well man and ready for business right now.” 
Moreover, having slept again in the afternoon, he 
dressed and went down to dinner, leaning but lightly 
on Alice, who conducted him. 

“My! but you and your mother have been at it 
with your scrubbing and dusting!”’ he said, as the; 
came through the “living-room.” “I don’t know 
I ever did see the house so spick and span before!”’ 
His glance fell upon a few carnations in a vase, and 
he chuckled admiringly. “Flowers, too! So that’s 
what you coaxed that dollar and a half out o ’me for- 
this morning!” 

Other embellishments brought forth his comment 
when he had taken his old seat at the head of the 
small dinner-table. ‘‘Why, I declare, Alice!’’ he 
exclaimed. ‘I been so busy looking at all the spick- 


ALICE ADAMS 187 


and-spanishness after the house-cleaning, and the 
flowers out in the parlour—living-room’ I suppose 
you want me to call it, if I just got to be fashionable— 
I been so busy studying over all this so-and-so, I 
declare I never noticed you till this minute! My, but 
you are all dressed up! What’s goin’ on? What’s 
it about: you so all dressed up, and flowers in the 
parlour and everything?” 

“Don’t you see, papa? It’s in honour of your 
coming downstairs again, of course.” 

“Oh, so that’s it,” he said. ‘I never would ’a’ 
thought of that, I guess.” 

_ But Walter looked sidelong at his father, and gave 
forth his sly and knowing laugh. “Neither would 
I!” he said. 

Adams lifted his eyebrows jocosely. “You're 
jealous, are you, sonny? You don’t want the old 
man to think our young lady’d make so much fuss 
over him, do you?” 
| “Go on thinkin’ it’s over you,” Walter retorted, 
amused. “Go on and think it. It’ll do you good.” 

“Of course I'll think it,” Adams said. “It isn’t 
anybody’s birthday. Certainly the decorations are 
on account of me coming downstairs. Didn’t you 
hear Alice say so?”’ 


188 ALICE ADAMS 


*“Sure, I heard her say so.” 

“Well, then by 

Walter interrupted him with a little music. Look- 
ing shrewdly at Alice, he sang: 





“T was walkin’ out on Monday with my sweet thing. 
She’s my neat thing, 
My sweet thing: 
I'll go round on Tuesday night to see her. 
Oh, how we'll spoon——’”’ 


“Walter!” his mother cried. ‘‘ Where do you learn 
such vulgar songs?’? However, she seemed not 
greatly displeased with him, and laughed as she 
spoke. 

“So that’s it, Alice!”” said Adams. “Playing the 
hypocrite with your old man, are you? It’s some 
new beau, is it?” 

“T only wish it were,” she said, calmly. ‘No. It’s 
just what I said: it’s all for you. dear.” 

‘Don’t let her con you,”’ Walter advised his father. 
“She’s got expectations. You hang around down- 
stairs a while after dinner and you'll see.” 

But the prophecy failed, though Adams went to 
his own reom without waiting to test it. No one 
came. 

Aliee stayed in the “living-room” until half-past 


ALICE ADAMS 189 


nine, when she went slowly upstairs. Her mother, 
almost tearful, met her at the top, and whispered, 
“You mustn’t mind, dearie.”’ 

‘“Mustn’t mind what?” Alice asked, and then, 
as she went on her way, laughed scornfully. “What 


17? 


utter nonsense!” she said. 

Next day she cut the stems of the rather scant 
show of carnations and refreshed them with new 
water. At dinner, her father, still in high ‘spirits, 
observed that she had again “dressed up” in 
honour of his second descent of the stairs; and 
Walter repeated his fragment of objectionable song; 
but these jocularities were rendered pointless by 
the eventless evening that followed; and in the 
morning the carnations began to appear tarnished 
and flaccid. Alice gave them a long look, then 
threw them away; and neither Walter nor her father 
was inspired to any rallying by her plain costume for 
that evening. Mrs. Adams was visibly depressed. 

When Alice finished helping her mother with the 
dishes, she went outdoors and sat upon the steps of 
the little front veranda. The night, gentle with 
warm air from the south, surrounded her pleasantly, 
and the perpetual smoke was thinner. Now that 
the furnaces of dwelling-houses were no longer fired, 


190 ALICE ADAMS 
life in that city had begun to be less like life in a rail- 


way tunnel; people were aware of summer in the 
air, and in the thickened foliage of the shade-trees, 
and in the sky. Stars were unveiled by the passing 
of the denser smoke fogs, and to-night they could 
be seen clearly; they looked warm and near. Other 
girls sat upon verandas and stoops in Alice’s street, 
cheerful as young fishermen along the banks of a 
stream. : 

Alice could hear them from time to time; thin 
sopranos persistent in laughter that fell dismally upon 
her ears. She had set no lines or nets herself, and 
what she had of “expectations,” as Walter called 
them, were vanished. For Alice was experienced; 
and one of the conclusions she drew from her 
experience was that when a man says, “I’d take you 
for anything you wanted me to,” he may mean it or 
he may not; but, if he does, he will not postpone 
the first opportunity to say something more. Little 
affairs, once begun, must be warmed quickly; for if 
they cool they are dead. 

But Alice was not thinking of Arthur Russell. 
When she tossed away the carnations she likewise 
tossed away her thoughts of that young man. She 
had been like a boy who sees upon the street, some 


J ALICE ADAMS 191 


distance before him, a bit of something round and 
glittering, a possible dime. He hopes it is a dime, 
and, until he comes near enough to make sure, he 
plays that it is a dime. In his mind he has an 
adventure with it: he buys something delightful. 
If he picks it up, discovering only some tin-foil which 
has happened upon a round shape, he feels a sinking. 
A dulness falls upon him. 

So Alice was dull with the loss of an adventure; 
and when the laughter of other girls reached her, 
intermittently, she had not sprightliness enough left 
in her to be envious of their gaiety. Besides, these 
neighbours were ineligible even for her envy, being 
of another caste; they could never know a dance at 
the Palmers’, except remotely, through a newspaper. 
Their laughter was for the encouragement of suappy 
young men of the stores and offices down-town, 
clerks, bookkeepers, what not—some of them prob- 
ably graduates of Frincke’s Business College. 

Then, as she recalled that dark portal, with its 
dusty stairway mounting between close walls to dis- 
appear in the upper shadows, her mind drew back 
as from a doorway to Purgatory. Nevertheless, it was 
a picture often in her reverie; and sometimes it came 
suddenly, without sequence, into the midst of her 


192 ALICE ADAMS 


other thoughts, as if it leaped up among them from a 
lower darkness; and when it arrived it wanted to stay. 
So a traveller, still roaming the world afar, sometimes 
broods without apparent reason upon his family 
burial lot: “I wonder if I shall end there.” 

The foreboding passed abruptly, with a jerk of 
her breath, as the street-lamp revealed a tall and 
easy figure approaching from the north, swinging a 
stick in time to its stride. She had given Russell up 
—and he came. 

“What luck for me!” he exclaimed. “To find you 
alone!” 

Alice gave him her hand for an instant, not other- 
wise moving. “I’m glad it happened so,” she said. 
*“Let’s stay out here, shall we? Do you think it’s 
too provincial to sit on a girl’s front steps with 
her?” 

““Provincial?? Why, it’s the very best of our 
institutions,” he returned, taking his place beside 
her. “At least, I think so to-night.” 

“Thanks! Is that practise for other nights some- 
where else?” , 

“No,” he laughed. “The practising all led up te 
this. Did I come too soon?” 

“No,” she replied, gravely. “Just in time!”’ 


ALICE ADAMS 193 


“I’m glad to be so accurate; I’ve spent two even- 
ings wanting to come, Miss Adams, instead of doing 
what I was doing.” 

“What was that?” 

“Dinners. Large and long dinners. Your fellow- 
citizens are immensely hospitable to a newcomer.”’ 

“Oh, no,” Alice said. “We don’t do it for every- 
body. Didn’t you find yourself charmed?” 

“One was a men’s dinner,” he explained. “Mr. 
Palmer seemed to think I ought to be shown to the 
principal business men.” 

“What was the other dinner?”’ 

“My cousin Mildred gave it.” 

“Oh, did she!” Alice said, sharply, but she re- 
covered herself in the same instant, and laughed. 
“She wanted to show you to the principal business 
women, I suppose.” 

“T don’t know.. At all events, I shouldn’t give 
myself out to be so much féted by your ‘fellow- 
citizens,’ after all, seeing these were both done by 
my relatives, the Palmers. However, there are 
others to follow, I’m afraid. I was wondering—I 
hoped maybe you’d be coming to some of them. 
Aren’t you?” 

“T rather doubt it,” Alice said, slowly. ‘‘Mildred’s 


194 ALICE ADAMS 


dance was almost the only evening I’ve gone out 
since my father’s illness began. He seemed better 
that day; so I went. He was better the other day 
when he wanted those cigars. He’s very much up 
and down.” She paused. “I’d almost forgotten 
that Mildred is your cousin.” 

““Not a very near one,” he explained. ‘Mr. 
Palmer’s father was my great-uncle.” 

*Still, of course you are related.” 

“Yes; that distantly.” ; 

Alice said placidly, “It’s quite an advantage.” 

He agreed. “Yes. It is.” 

*“No,”’ she said, in the same placid tone. “I mean 
for Mildred.” 

“I don’t see——”’ 

She laughed. ‘No. You wouldn’t. I mean it’s 
an advantage over the rest of us who might like to 
compete for some of your time; and the worst of it is 
we can’t accuse her of being unfair about it. We 
can’t prove she showed any trickiness in having you 
for a cousin. Whatever else she might plan to do 
with you, she didn’t plan that. So the rest of us 
must just bear it!” 

“The ‘rest of you!’” he laughed. “It’s going te 


9? 
! 


mean a great deal of suffering 


ALICE ADAMS 195 


Alice resumed her placid tone. “You're staying 
at the Palmers’, aren’t you?” 

“No, not now. I’ve taken an apartment. I’m 
going to live here; I’m permanent. Didn’t I tell 
you?” 

“T think I’d heard somewhere that you were,” 
she said. “Do you think you’ll like living here?” 

“How ean one tell?” 

‘If I were in your place I think I should be able to 
tell, Mr. Russell.”’ 

“How?” 

“Why, good gracious!” she cried. “Haven’t you 
zot the most perfect creature in town for your—your 
cousin? She expects to make you like living here, 
doesn’t she? How could you keep from liking it, 
even if you tried not to, under the circumstances?” 

“Well, you see, there’s such a lot of circumstances,” 
he explained; “I’m not sure I'll like getting back into 
a business again. I suppose most of the men of my 
age in the country have been going through the same 
experience: the War left us with a considerable rest~ 
lessness of spirit.” 

“You were in the War?”’ she asked, quickly, and as 
quickly answered herself, ““Of course you were!’ 

‘I was a left-over; they only let me out about four 


196 ALICE ADAMS 


months ago,” he said. “It’s quite a shake-up trying 
to settle down again.” 

“You were in France, then?”’ 

“Oh, yes; but I didn’t get up to the front much—~ 
only two or three times, and then just for a day or so. 
I was in the transportation service.” 

“You were an officer, of course.”’ 

“Yes,” he said. “They let me play I was a 
major.” 

“I guessed a major,” she said. ‘“‘ You’d always 
be pretty grand, of course.” 

Russell was amused. “Well, you see,” he in- 
formed her, ‘“‘as it happened, we had at least several 
other majors in ourarmy. Why would I always be 
something ‘pretty grand?’”’ 

*You’re related to the Palmers. Don’t you notice 
they always affect the pretty grand?” 

Then you think I’m only one of their affectations, 
I take it.” 

“Yes, you seem to be the most successful one 
they’ve got!” Alice said, lightly. ‘“‘You certainly 
do belong to them.” And she laughed as if at some- 
thing hidden from him. ‘Don’t you?” 

“But you’ve just excused me for that,’ he pro- 
tested. “You said nobody could be blamed for my 


ALICE ADAMS 197 


being their third cousin. What a contradictory girl 
you are!” 

Alice shook her head. ‘“‘Let’s keep away from the 
kind of girl I am.” 

“No,” he said. “That’s just what I came here to 
talk about.”’ | 

She shook her head again. ‘“‘Let’s keep first to the 
kind of man you are. I’m glad you were in the War.” 

“Why?” 

“Oh, I don’t know.” She was quiet a moment, 
for she was thinking that here she spoke the truth: 
his service put about him a little glamour that helped 
to please her with him. She had been pleased with 
him during their walk; pleased with him on his own 
account; and now that pleasure was growing keener. 
She looked at him, and though the light in which she 
saw him was little more than starlight, she saw that 
he was looking steadily at her with a kindly and 
smiling seriousness. All at once it seemed to her 
that the night air was sweeter to breathe, as if a dis- 
tant fragrance of new blossoms had been blown to 
her. She smiled back to him, and said, “‘ Well, what. 
kind of man are you?” 

“I don’t know; I’ve often wondered,” he replied. 
“What kind of girl are you?”’ 


198 ALICE ADAMS 
“Don’t you remember? I told you the ether day. 


I’m just me!” 

“But who is that?” 

“You forget everything,” said Alice. “You told 
me what kind of a girl Iam. You seemed to think 
you'd taken quite a fancy to me from the very first.” 

*“So I did,” he agreed, heartily. 

“But how quickly you forgot it!’ 

“Oh, no. I only want you to say what kind of a 
girl you are.” 

She mocked him. “‘I don’t know; I’ve often 
wondered!’ What kind of a girl does Mildred tell 
you I am? What has she said about me since she 
told you I was ‘a Miss Adams?’”’ 

“T don’t know; I haven’t asked her.” 

“Then don’t ask her,’ Alice said, quickly. 

“Why?” 

‘Because she’s such a perfect creature and I’m 
such an imperfect one. Perfect creatures have the 
most perfect way of ruining the imperfect ones.” 

“But then they wouldn’t be perfect. Not if 
they——”” 

“Oh, yes, they remain perfectly perfect,”’ she assured 
him. “That’s because they never go into details. 
They’re not so vulgar as to come right out and tell that 


ALICE ADAMS 199 


you’ve been in jail for stealing chickens. They just 
look absent-minded and say in a low voice, ‘Oh, very; 
but I scarcely think you’d like her particularly’; and 
then begin to talk of something else right away.” 

His smile had disappeared. ‘“‘ Yes,” he said, some- 
what ruefully. “That does sound like Mildred. 
You certainly do seem to know her! Do you know 
everybody as well as that?” 

“Not myself,” Alice said. “I don’t know myself 
at all. I got to wondering about that—about who I 
was—the other day after you walked home with me.” 

-He uttered an exclamation, and added, explaining 
it, “You do give a man a chance to be fatuous, 
though! As if it were walking home with me that 
made you wonder about yourself!”’ 

“It was,’ Alice informed him, coolly. “I was 
wondering what I wanted to make you think of me, 
in case I should ever happen to see you again.” 

This audacity appeared to take his breath. “By 
George!” he cried. 

“You mustn’t be astonished,” she said. “What 
I decided then was that I would probably never dare 
to be just myself with you—not if I cared to have you 
want to see me again—and yet here I am, just being 
myself after all!” 


200 ALICE ADAMS 


“You are the cheeriest series of shocks,” Russell 
exclaimed, whereupon Alice added to the series. 

“Tell me: Isit a good policy for me to follow with 
you?” she asked, and he found the mockery in her 
voice delightful. “Would you advise me to offer you 
shocks as a sort of vacation from suavity?” 

““Suavity”’’ was yet another sketch of Mildred; a 
recognizable one, or it would not have been humor- 
ous. In Alice’s hands, so dexterous in this work, her 
statuesque friend was becoming as ridiculous as a 
fine figure of wax left to the mercies of a satirist. 

But the lively young sculptress knew better than to 
overdo: what she did must appear to spring all from 
mirth; so she laughed as if unwillingly, and said, “I 
musin’t laugh at Mildred! In the first place, she’s 
your—your cousin. And in the second place, she’s 
not meant to be funny; it isn’t right to laugh at 
really splendid people who take themselves seriously. 
In the third place, you won’t come again if I do.” 

“Don’t be sure of that,” Russell said, “whatever 
you do.” 

“Whatever I do?’” she echoed. “That sounds as 
if you thought I could be terrific! Be careful; there’s 
one thing I could do that would keep you away.” 

“What's that?” 


ALICE ADAMS 3 201 


*T could tell you not to come,” she said. “I 
wonder if I ought to.” 

- “Why do you wonder if you ‘ought to?’”’ 

“Don’t you guess?” 

“No.” 

“Then let’s both be mysteries to each other,” she 
suggested. “I mystify you because I wonder, and 
you mystify me because you don’t guess why I 
wonder. We'll let it go at that, shall we?”’ 

“Very well; so long as it’s certain that you don’t tell 
me not to come again.” 

“Tl not tell you that—yet,” she said. “In 
fact ” She paused, reflecting, with her head to 





one side. “In fact, I won’t tell you not to come, 
probably, until I see that’s what you want me to tell 
you. Ill let you out easily—and I'll be sure to see it. 
Even before you do, perhaps.” 

“That arrangement suits me,” Russell returned, 
and his voice held no trace of jocularity: he had be- 
come serious. “It suits me better if you’re enough in 
earnest to mean that I can come—oh, not whenever I 
want to; I don’t expect so much!—but if you mean 
that I can see you pretty often.” 

“Of course I’m in earnest,” she said. “But before 
I say you can come ‘pretty often,’ I'd like to know 


202 ALICE ADAMS 


how much of my time you'd need if you did come 
‘whenever you want to’; and of course you wouldn’t 
dare make any answer to that question except one. 
Wouldn’t you let me have Thursdays out?” 

“No, no,” he protested. “I want to know. Will 
you let me come pretty often?” 

**Lean toward me a little,’’ Alice said. “I want 
you to understand.”’ And as he obediently bent his 
head near hers, she inclined toward him as if to whis- 
per; then, in a half-shout, she cried, 

“Yes!” 

He clapped his hands. “By George!” he said. 
“What a girl you are!”’ 

“Why?” 

“‘Well, for the first reason, because you have suck 
gaieties as that one. I should think your father 
would actually like being ill, just to be in the house 
with you all the time.” 

“You mean by that,” Alice inquired, “I keep my 
family cheerful with my amusing little ways?”’ 

“Yes. Don’t you?” 

“There were only boys in your family, weren’t 
there, Mr. Russell?” 

“IT was an only child, unfortunately.” 
- Yes,” she said. “I see you hadn’t any sisters.” 


ALICE ADAMS 208 


For a moment he puzzled over her meaning, then 
saw it, and was more delighted with her than ever. 
“T can answer a question of yours, now, that I 
eouldn’t a while ago.” 

“Yes, I know,” she returned, quietly. 

“But how could you know?” 

“It’s the question I asked you about whether you 
were going to like living here,” she said. “You're 
about to tell me that now you know you will like it.” 

“More telepathy!’ he exclaimed. “Yes, that was 
it, precisely. I suppose the same thing’s been said 


99 





to you so many times that you 
“No, it hasn’t,”’ Alice said, a little confused for the 
moment. “Notatall. I meant *” She paused, 





then asked in a gentle voice, “Would you really like 
to know?” 

Ves:' 

** Well, then, I was only afraid you didn’t mean it.” 

“See here,” he said. “Idid meanit. I told you it 
was being pretty difficult for me to settle down to 
things again. Well, it’s more difficult than you 
know, but I think I can pull through in fair spirits 
if I can see a girl like you ‘pretty often.’”’ : 

“All right,” she said, in a business-like tone. “I’ve 
told you that you can if you want to.” 


204 ALICE ADAMS 


“IT do want to,” he assured her. “I do, indeed!” 

*‘How often is ‘pretty often,’ Mr. Russell?” 

“Would you walk with me sometimes? To- 
morrow?” | 

“Sometimes. Not to-morrow. The day after.” 

*That’s splendid!” hesaid. ‘‘ You'll walk with me 
day after to-morrow, and the night after that I'll see 
you at Miss Lamb’s dance, won’t I?” 

But this fell rather chillingly upon Alice. “Miss 
Lamb’s dance? Which Miss Lamb?” she asked. 
__ “I don’t know—it’s the one that’s just coming out 
of mourning.” 

“Oh, Henrietta—yes. Is her dance so soon? I'd 
forgotten.”’ 

“You'll be there, won’t you?” he asked. “Please 
Say you’re going.” 

Alice did not respond at once, and he urged her 
again: “‘ Please do promise you'll be there.” 

**No, I can’t promise anything,” she said, slowly. 
“You see, for one thing, papa might not be we 


enough.” 
“But if he is?” said Russell. “If heis you'll surely 
come, won’t you? Or, perhaps ” He hesitated, 





then went on quickly, “‘I don’t know the rules in this 
place yet, and different places have different rules; 


ALICE ADAMS 205 


but do you have to have a chaperone, or don’t girls 
just go to dances with the men sometimes? If they 
do, would you—would you let me take you?” 

Alice was startled. “Good gracious!” 

““What’s the matter?” 

“Don’t you think your relatives———  Aren’t you 
expected to go with Mildred—and Mrs. Palmer?” 

““Not necessarily. It doesn’t matter what I 
might be expected to do,” he said. “Will you go 
with me?”’ 

ag! No; I couldn’t.” 

“Why not?” 

“I can’t. I’m not going.” 

“But why?” 

**Papa’s not really any better,” Alice said, huskily. 





“T’m too worried about him to go to a dance.” Her 
voice sounded emotional, genuinely enough; there 
was something almost like a sob in it. “Let’s talk of 
other things, please.”’ 

He acquiesced gently; but Mrs. Adams, who had 
been listening to the conversation at the open win- 
dow, just overhead, did not hear him. She had 
correctly interpreted the sob in Alice’s voice, and, 
trembling with sudden anger, she rose from her 
knees, and went fiercely to her husband’s room. 


CHAPTER XIII 


E HAD not undressed, and he sat beside 
H the table, smoking his pipe and reading his 
newspaper. Upon his forehead the lines 
in that old pattern, the historical map of his troubles, 
had grown a little vaguer lately; relaxed by the 
complacency of a man who not only finds his health 
restored, but sees the days before him promising once 
more a familiar routine that he has always liked to 
follow. 

As his wife came in, closing the door behind her, 
he looked up cheerfully, ‘Well, mother,” he said, 
“what’s the news downstairs?”’ 

*That’s what I came to tell you,” she informed 
him, grimly. 

Adams lowered his newspaper to his knee and 
peered over his spectacles at her. She had remained 
by the door, standing, and the great greenish shadow 
of the small lamp-shade upon his table revealed her 
but dubiously. “Isn’t everything all right?” he 


asked. ‘‘What’s the matter?” 
206 


ALICE ADAMS 207 


“Don’t worry: I’m going to tell you,” she said, 
her grimness not relaxed. “‘There’s matter enough, 
Virgil Adams. Matter enough to make me sick of 
being alive!”’ 

With that, the markings on his brows began to 
emerge again in all their sharpness; the old pattern 
reappeared. “Oh, my, my!” he lamented. “I 
thought maybe we were all going to settle down to a 
little peace for a while. What’s it about now?” 

It’s about Alice. Did you think it was about me 
er anything for myself ?”’ 

Like some ready old machine, always in order, his 
irritability responded immediately and automatically 
to her emotion. “How in thunder could I think 
what it’s about, or who it’s for? Say it, and get it 
over!” 

“Oh, I'll ‘say’ it,’ she promised, ominously. 
*“What I’ve come to ask you is, How much longer do 
you expect me to put up with that old man and his 
doings?” 

‘‘Whose doings? What old man?” 

She came at him, fiercely accusing. “You know 
well enough what old man, Virgil Adams! That 
old man who was here the other night.” 

“Mr. Lamb?”’ 


208 ALICE ADAMS 


“Yes; ‘Mister Lamb!” She mocked his voice. 
“What other old man would I be likely to mean, 
except J. A. Lamb?” 

“What’s he been doing now?” her husband in- 
quired, satirically. “Where'd you get something 
new against him since the last time you ty 

“Just this!” she cried. “The other night when 
that man was here, if I’d known how he was going 





to make my child suffer, I'd never have let him 
set his foot in my house.” 

Adams leaned back in his chair as though her 
absurdity had eased his mind. “Oh, I see,” he 
said. ‘“‘You’ve just gone plain crazy. That’s the 
only explanation of such talk, and it suits the case.” 

*‘Hasn’t that man made us all suffer every day of 
our lives?” she demanded. “I’d like to know 
why it is that my life and my children’s lives have 
to be sacrificed to him?”’ 

‘How are they ‘sacrificed’ to him?” 

“Because you keep on working for him! Because 
you keep on letting him hand out whatever miserable 
little- pittance he chooses to give you; that’s why! 
It’s as if he were some horrible old Juggernaut and 
I had to see my children’s own father throwing them 
under the wheels to keep him satisfied.” 


ALICE ADAMS 209 


“JT won’t hear any more such stuff!”’ Lifting his 
paper, Adams affected to read. 

“You'd better listen to me,” she admonished 
him. “You might be sorry you didn’t, in case he 
ever tried to set foot in my house again! I might 
tell him to his face what I think of him.” 

At this, Adams slapped the newspaper down upon 
his knee. “Oh, the devil! What’s it matter what 
you think of him?” 

“Tt had better matter to you!” she cried. “Do 
you suppose I’m going to submit forever to him and 
his family and what they’re doing to my child?” 

“What are he and his family doing to ‘your 
child?’”’ 

Mrs. Adams came out with it. “That snippy 
little Henrietta Lamb has always snubbed Alice 
every time she’s ever had the chance. She’s followea 
the lead of the other girls; they’ve always all of ’em 
been jealous of Alice because she dared to try and 
be happy, and because she’s showier and better- 
looking than they are, even though you do give 
her only about thirty-five ceuts a year to do it on! 
They’ve all done everything on earth they could to 
drive the young men away from her and belittle 
her to ’em; and this mean little Henrietta Lamb’s 


210 ALICE ADAMS 
been the worst of the whole crowd to Alice, every 


time she could see a chance.” 

“What for?” Adams asked, incredulously. ‘Why 
should she or anybody else pick on Alice?” 

“‘Why?’ ‘What for?’” his wife repeated with a 
greater vehemence. “Do you ask me such a thing 
as that? Do you really want to know?”’ 

“Yes; ’'d want to know—I would if I believed it.”’ 

“Then I'll tell you,” she said in a cold fury. “It’s 
on account of you, Virgil, and nothing else in the 
world.” | 

He hooted at her. “Qh, yes! These girls don’t 
like me, so they pick on Alice.” 

“Quit your palavering and evading,” she said. 
“A crowd of girls like that, when they get a pretty 
girl like Alice among them, they act just like wild 
beasts. They’ll tear her to pieces, or else they'll 
chase her and run her out, because they know if she 
had half a chance she’d outshine ’em. They can’t 
do that to a girl like Mildred Palmer because she’s 
got money and family to back her. Now you 
listen to me, Virgil Adams: the way the world is 
‘ now, money 7s family. Alice would have just as 
much ‘family’ as any of ’em—every single bit—if 
you hadn’t fallen behind in the race.” 


, ALICE ADAMS 211 
“How did I e 
“Yes, you did!”’ she cried. ‘Twenty-five years 





ago when we were starting and this town was smaller, 
you and I could have gone with any of ’em if we'd 
tried hard enough. Look at the people we knew 
then that do hold their heads up alongside of anybody 
in this town! Why can they? Because the men of . 
those families made money and gave their children 
everything that makes life worth living! Why 
can’t we hold our heads up? Because those men 
passed you in the race. They went up the ladder, 
and you—you’re still a clerk down at that old hole!”’ 

“You leave that out, please,” he said. “I thought 
you were going to tell me something Henrietta Lamb 
had done to our Alice.” 

“You bet I’m going to tell you,” she assured him, 
vehemently. “But first I’m telling why she does 
it. It’s because you’ve never given Alice any 
backing nor any background, and they all know 
they can do anything they like to her with perfect 
impunity. If she had the hundredth part of what 
they have to fall back on she’d have made ’em sing 
a mighty different song long ago!” 
“How would she?” 

“Oh, my heavens, but you’re slow!’ Mrs. Adams 


212 ALICE ADAMS 


moaned. “Look here! You remember how prac- 
tically all the nicest boys in this town used to come 
here a few years ago. Why, they were all crazy 
over her; and the girls had to be nice to her then. 
Look at the difference now! ‘There'll be a whole 
month ge by and not a young man come to call on 
her, let alone send her candy or flowers, or ever 
think of taking her any place—and yet she’s prettier 
and brighter than she was when they used to come. 
Tt isn’t the child’s fault she couldn’t hold ’em, is it? 
Poor thing, she tried hard enough! I suppose you’d 
say it was her fault, though.” 

**No; I wouldn’t.” 

“Then whose fault is it?”’ 

“Oh, mine, mine,”’ he said, wearily. “I drove the 
young men away, of course.” 

“You might as well have driven ’em, Virgil. It 
amounts to just the same thing.” 

“How does it?”’ 

“Because as they got older a good many of ’em 
began to think more about money; that’s one 
_ thing. Money’s at the bottom of it all, for that 
matter. Look at these country clubs and all such 
things: the other girls’ families belong and we don’t, 
and Alice don’t; and she can’t go unless somebody 


ALICE ADAMS 213 


takes her, and nobody does any more. Look at the 
other girls’ houses, and then look at our house, 
so shabby and old-fashioned she’d be pretty near 
ashamed to ask anybody to come in and sit down 
nowadays! Look at her clothes—oh, yes; you think 
you shelled out a lot for that little coat of hers and 
the hat and skirt she got last March; but it’s nothing. 
Some of these girls nowadays spend more than your 
whole salary on their clothes. And what jewellery 
has she got? A plated watch and two or three little 
pins and rings of the kind people’s maids wouldn’t 
wear now. Good Lord, Virgil Adams, wake up! 
Don’t sit there and tell me you don’t know things 
like this mean suffering for the child!” 

He had begun to rub his hands wretchedly back and 
forth over his bony knees, as if in that way he some- 
what alleviated the tedium caused by her racking 
voice. “Oh, my, my!” he muttered. “Oh, my, my!” 

“Yes, I should think you would say ‘Oh, my, 
my!’” she took him up, loudly. “That doesn’t 
help things much! If you ever wanted te do any- 
thing about it, the poor child might see some gleam 
of hope in her life. You don’t care for her, that’s 
the trouble; you don’t care a single thing abeut her.” 

“T don’t?” 


214 ALICE ADAMS 


“No; you don’t. Why, even with your miserable 
little salary you could have given her more than you 
have. You’re the closest man I ever knew: it’s 
like pulling teeth to get a dollar out of you for her, 
now and then, and yet you hide some away, every 
month er so, in some wretched little investment or 
other. You ‘a 

‘Look here, now,” he interrupted, angrily. “You 
look here! If I didn’t put a little by whenever I 
could, in a bond or something, where would you be 





if anything happened to me? The msurance doc- 
tors never passed me; you know that. Haven’t we 
got to have something to fall back on?” 

“Yes, we have!” she cried. ““We ought to have 
something to go on with right now, too, when we 
need it. Do you suppose these snippets would 
treat Alice the way they do if she could afford to 
entertain? They leave her out of their dinners and 
dances simply because they know she can’t give 
any dinners and dances to leave them out of! They 
know she can’t get even, and that’s the whole story! 
That’s why Henrietta Lamb’s done this thing to 


her now.” 
Adams had gone back to his rubbing of his knees. 


“Oh, my, my!” he said. “What thing?” 


ALICE ADAMS 215 


She told him. “Your dear, grand, old Mister 
Lamb’s Henrietta has sent out invitations for a 
large party—a large one. Everybody that is any- 
body in this town is asked, you can be sure. There’s 
a very fine young man, a Mr. Russell, has just come 
to town, and he’s interested in Alice, and he’s asked 
her to go to this dance with him. Well, Alice can’t 
accept. She can’t go with him, though she’d give 
anything in the world to do it. Do you understand? 
The reason she can’t is because Henrietta Lamb 
hasn’t invited her. Do you want to know why 
Henrietta hasn’t invited her? It’s because she 
knows Alice can’t get even, and because she thinks 
Alice ought to be snubbed like this on account of 
only being the daughter of one of her grandfather’s 
clerks. I hope you understand!”’ 

“Oh, my, my!” he said. “Oh, my, my!” 

“That’s your sweet old employer,” his wife cried, 
tauntingly. ‘“That’s your dear, kind, grand old 
Mister Lamb! Alice has been left out of a good 
many smaller things, like big dinners and little 
dances, but this is just the same as serving her 
notice that she’s out of everything! And it’s all 


99 





done by your dear, grand old 
“Look here!’ Adams exclaimed. “I don’t want 


216 ALICE ADAMS 


to hear any more of that! You can’t hold him 
responsible for everything his grandchildren do, I 
guess! He probably doesn’t know a thing about it. 


99 





You don’t suppose he’s troubling has head over 

But she burst out at him passionately. “Suppose 
you trouble your head about it! You’d better, 
Virgil Adams! You'd better, unless you want to 
see your child just dry up into a miserable old maid! 
She’s still young and she has a chance for happiness, 
if she had a father that didn’t bring a millstone to 
hang around her neck, instead of what he ought to 
give her! You just wait till you die and God asks 
you what you had in your breast instead of a heart!” 
“Oh, my, my!” he groaned. ‘“‘What’s my heart 
got to do with it?” 

“Nothing! You haven’t got one or you'd give 
her what she needed. Am I asking anything you 
can’t do? You know better; you know I’m not!” 

At this he sat suddenly rigid, his troubled hands 
ceasing to rub his knees; and he looked at her fixedly. 
“‘Now, tell me,” he said, slowly. “Just what are 
you asking?” : 

*“You know!” she sobbed. 

“You mean you’ve broken your word never to 


speak of that to me again?” 


ALICE ADAMS Q17 


“What do I care for my word?”’ she cried, and, 
sinking to the floor at his feet, rocked herself back 
and forth there. “Do you suppose I’llJet my ‘word’ . 
keep me from struggling for a little happiness for my 
children? It won’t, I tell you; it won’t! Ill struggle 
for that till I die! I will, till I die—till I die!” 

He rubbed his head now instead of his knees, and, 
shaking all over, he got up and began with uncertain 
steps to pace the floor. “Hell, hell, hell!” he said. 
“T’ve got to go through that again!” 

“Yes, you have!” she sobbed. “Till I die.” 

“Ves, that’s what you been after all the time I 
was getting well.” 

“Yes, I have, and I’ll keep on till I die!” 

*‘A fine wife fora man,” he said. ‘Beggin’ a man 
to be a dirty dog!” 

“No! To be.a man—and I'll keep on till I die!” — 

Adams again fell back upon his last solace: he 
walked, half staggering, up and down the room, 
swearing in a rhythmic repetition. 

His wife had repetitions of her own, and she kept 
at them in a voice that rose to a higher and higher 
pitch, like the sound of an old well-pump. “Till 
I die! Till I die! Till I dive!” 


She ended in a scream; and Alice, coming up the 


218 ALICE ADAMS 
stairs, thanked heaven that Russell had gone. She 


ran to her father’s door and went in. 

Adams looked at her, and gesticulated shakily at 
the convulsive figure on the floor. “Can you get 
her out of here?”’ 

Alice helped Mrs. Adams to her feet; and the 
stricken woman threw her arms passionately about 
her daughter. . 

“Get her out!’? Adams said, harshly; then cried, 
“Wait!” 

Alice, moving toward the door, halted, and 
looked at him blankly, over her mother’s shoulder. 
“What is it, papa?”’ 

He stretched out his arm and pointed at her. 
*‘She says—she says you have a mean life, Alice.”’ 

“No, papa.” 

Mrs. Adams turned in her daughter’s arms. “Do 
you hear her lie? Couldn’t you be as brave as she 
is, Virgil?” 

“Are you lying, Alice?” he asked. “Do you 
have a mean time?” 

“No, papa.” 

He came toward her. “Look at me!” he said. 
“Things like this dance now—is that so hard te 
bear?” 


ALICE ADAMS 219 


Alice tried to say, “‘No, papa,” again, but she 
couldn’t. Suddenly and in spite of herself she began 
to cry. 

*“Do you hear her?” his wife sobbed. “Now do 


39 





you 

He waved at them fiercely. “Get out of here!” 
he said. ‘“‘Both of you! Get out of here!”’ 

As they went, he dropped in his chair and bent far 
forward, so that his haggard face was concealed 
from them. Then, as Alice closed the door, he 
began to rub his knees again, muttering, “Oh, my, 
my! Oh, my, my!” 


CHAPTER XIV 


HERE shone a jovial sun overhead on the 

appointed “day after to-morrow”; a day 

not cool yet of a temperature friendly to 
walkers; and the air, powdered with sunshine, had 
so much life in it that it seemed to sparkle. To 
Arthur Russell this was a day like a gay companion 
who pleased him well; but the gay companion at 
his side pleased him even better. She looked her 
prettiest, chattered her wittiest, smiled her wistfulest, 
and delighted him with ali together. 

“You look so happy it’s easy to see your father’s 
taken a good turn,” he told her. 

““Yes; he has this afternoon, at least,”’ she said. 
“I might have other reasons for looking cheerful, 
though.” 

“For instance?” 

“Exactly!” she said, giving him a sweet look just 
enough mocked by her laughter. “For instance!”’ 

“Well, go on,” he begged. 


““[sn’t it expected?” she asked. 
220 


ALICE ADAMS 221 


“Of you, you mean?” 

“No,” she returned. “For you, I mean!” 

In this style, which uses a word for any meaning 
that quick look and colourful gesture care to endow 
it with, she was an expert; and she carried it merrily 
on, leaving him at liberty (one of the great values of 
the style) to choose as he would how much or how 
little she meant. He was content to supply mere 
cues, for although he had little coquetry of his own, 
he had lately begun to find that the only interesting 
moments in his life were those during which Alice 
Adams coquetted with him. Happily, these oblig- 
ing moments extended themselves to cover all the 
time he spent with her. However serious she 
might seem, whatever appeared to be her topic, 
all was thou-and-I. 

He planned for more of it, seeing otherwise a dull 
evening ahead; and reverted, afterwhile, to a for- 
bidden subject. ‘‘About that dance at Miss Lamb’s 
—since your father’s so much better——” 

She flushed a little. ‘‘Now, now!” she chided 
him. “We agreed not to say any more about 
that.” 

“Yes, but since he 7s better-———”’ 

Alice shook her head. “‘He won’t be better to- 


222 ALICE ADAMS 


morrow. He always has a bad day after a good 
one—especially after such a good one as this is.”’ 

“But if this time it should be different,” Russell 
persisted; “wouldn’t you be willing to come—if 
he’s better by to-morrow evening? Why not wait 
and decide at the last minute?”’ 

She waved her hands airily. ‘“‘What a pother!”’ 
she cried. ‘What does it matter whether poor 
little Alice Adams goes to a dance or not?” 

“Well, I thought I’d made it clear that it looks 
fairly bleak to me if you don’t go.” 

“Oh, yes!” she jeered. 

“It’s the simple truth,” he insisted. “I don’t 
‘care a great deal about dances these days; and if 
you aren’t going to be there——” 

_ “You could stay away,” she suggested. “You 
wouldn’t!”’ 

| ‘Unfortunately, I can’t. I’m afraid I’m supposed 
to be the excuse. Miss Lamb, in her eapacity as a 
friend of my relatives——”’ 

““Oh, she’s giving it for you! Isee! On Mildred’s 
account you mean?”’ 

At that his face showed an increase of colour. “I 
suppose just on account of my being a cousin of 


Mildred’s and o ye 





ALICE ADAMS 223 


“Of course! You'll have a beautiful time, too. 
Henrietta’ll see that you have somebody to dance 
with besides Miss Dowling, poor man!”’ 

“But what I want somebody to see is that I dance 





with you! And perhaps your father " 
*“Wait!”’ she said, frowning as if she debated 
whether or not to tell him something of import; 
then, seeming to decide affirmatively, she asked: 
“Would you really like to know the truth about it?’’ 
“Tf it isn’t too unflattering.” 
_ “Tt hasn’t anything to do with you at all,” she 
said. “Of course I'd like to go with you and to 
dance with you—though you don’t seem to realize 
that you wouldn’t be permitted much time with 


93 


me. 
“Oh, yes, I “ 
“Never mind!” she laughed. “Of course you 





wouldn’t. But even if papa should be better 
to-morrow, I doubt if I’'d go.. In fact, I know I 
wouldn’t. There’s another reason besides papa.” 

“Is there?” 

“Yes. The truth is, I don’t get on with Henrietta 
Lamb. As a matter of fact, I dislike her, and of 
course that means she dislikes me. I should never 
think of asking her to anything I gave, and I really 


224 ALICE ADAMS 
wonder she asks me to things she gives.” This 


was a new inspiration; and Alice, beginning to see 
her way out of a perplexity, wished that she had 
thought of it earlier: she should have told him 
from the first that she and «Henrietta had a feud, 
and consequently exchanged no invitations. More- 
over, there was another thing to beset her with 
little anxieties: she might better not have told 
him from the first, as she, had indeed told him by 
intimation, that she was the pampered daughter of 
an indulgent father, presumably able to indulge 
her; for now she must elaborately keep to the part. 
Veracity is usually simple; and its opposite, to be 
successful, should be as simple; but practitioners 
of the opposite are most often impulsive, like Alice; 
and, like her, they become enmeshed in elabora- 
tions. 

“It wouldn’t be very nice for me to go to her 
house,”” Alice went on, “‘when I wouldn’t want her 
in mine. I’ve never admired her. I’ve always 
thought she was lacking in some things most people 
are supposed to be equipped with—for instance, a 
certain feeling about the death of a father who was 
always pretty decent to his daughter. Henrietta’s 
father died just eleven months and twenty-seven 


ALICE ADAMS 225 


days before your cousin’s dance, but she couldn’t 
stick out those few last days and make it a year; 
she was there.” Alice stopped, then laughed rue- 
fully, exclaiming, “‘But this is dreadful of me!” 

“deat? : 

“Blackguarding her to you when she’s giving a 
big party for you! Just the way Henrietta would 
blackguard me to you—heaven knows what she 
wouldn’t say if she talked about me to you! It 
would be fair, of course, but—well, I’d rather she 
didn’t!”” And with that, Alice let her pretty 
hand, in its white glove, rest upon his arm for a 
moment; and he looked down at it, not unmoved to 
see it there. “I want to be unfair about just 
this,” she said, letting a troubled laughter tremble 
through her appealing voice as she spoke. “I won’t 
take advantage of her with anybody, except just— 
you! Id a little rather you didn’t hear anybody 
blackguard me, and, if you don’t mind—could you 
promise not to give Henrietta the chance?” 

It was charmingly done, with a humorous, faint 
pathos altogether genuine; and Russell found himself 
suddenly wanting to shout at her, “Oh, you dear/”’ 
Nothing else seemed adequate; but he controlled the 
impulse in favour of something more conservative. 


226 ALICE ADAMS 


“Imagine any one speaking unkindly of you—not 
praising you!” 

**Who has praised me to you?” she asked, quickly. 

**T haven’t talked about you with any one; but 
if I did, I know they’d——” 

*“No, no!” she cried, and went on, again ac- 
companying her words with little tremulous runs of 
laughter. “‘You don’t understand this town yet. 
You'll be surprised when you do; we’re different. 
We talk about one another fearfully! Haven’t I 
just proved it, the way I’ve been going for Hen- 
rietta? Of course I didn’t say anything really very 
terrible about her, but that’s only because I don’t 
follow that practise the way most of the others do. 
They don’t stop with the worst of the truth they 
can find: they make wp things—yes, they really do! 
And, oh, I’d rather they didn’t make up things 
about me—to you!” 

‘““What difference would it make if they did?” he 
inquired, cheerfully. ‘‘I’d know they weren’t true.” 

“Even if you did know that, they’d make a 
> she said. ‘Oh, yes, they would! It’s 
too bad, but we don’t like anything quite so well 


difference,’ 


that’s had specks on it, even if we’ve wiped the 
specks off;—it’s just that much spoiled, and some 


ALICE ADAMS 227 


things are all spoiled the instant they’re the least 
bit spoiled. What a man thinks about a girl, for 
instance. Do you want to have what you think 
about me spoiled, Mr. Russell?” 

“Oh, but that’s already far beyond reach,” he 
said, lightly. 

“But it can’t be!’ she protested. 

“Why not?” 

“Because it never-can be. Men don’t change 
their minds about one another often: they make it 
quite an event when they do, and talk about it as 
if something important had happened. But a girl 
only has to go down-town with a shoe-string un- 
fastened, and every man who sees her will change his 
mind about her. Don’t you know that’s true?” 

“Not of myself, I think.”’ 

*“There!”’ she cried. “That’s precisely what 
every man in the world would say!” 

“So you wouldn’t trust me?”’ 

*Well—I’ll be awfully worried if you give ’em a 
chance to tell you that I’m too lazy to tie my shoe- 
strings!” 

He laughed delightedly. “Is that what they 
do say?” he asked. | 

“Just about! Whatever they hope will get 


228 ALICE ADAMS 


results.”” She shook her head wisely. ‘Oh, yes; 
we do that here!” 

“But I don’t mind loose shoe-strings,”’ he said. 
“Not if they’re yours.” 

“They'll find out what you do mind.” 

“But suppose,” he said, looking at her whimsi- 
cally; “‘suppose I wouldn’t mind anything—so long 
as it’s yours?” 

She courtesied. “Oh, pretty enough! But a 
girl who’s talked about has a weakness that’s often a 
fatal one.” 

*'What is it?” 

“It’s this: when she’s talked about she isn’t 
there. 'That’s how they kill her.” 

“T’m afraid I don’t follow you.” 

“Don’t you see? If Henrietta—or Mildred—or 
any of ’em—or some of their mothers—oh, we all 
do it! Well, if any of ’em told you I didn’t tie my 
shoe-strings, and if I were there, so that you could 
see me, you’d know it wasn’t true. Even if I were 
sitting so that you couldn’t see my feet, and couldn’t 
tell whether the strings were tied or not just then, 
still you could look at me, and see that I wasn’t the 
sort of girl to neglect my shoe-strings. But that 
isn’t the way it happens: they'll get at you when © 


ALICE ADAMS 229 


I’m nowhere around and can’t remind you of the 
sort of girl I really am.” 

“But you don’t do that,” he complained. “You 
don’t remind me—you don’t even tell me—the sort 
of girl you really are! Id like to know.” 

*Let’s be serious then,” she said, and looked 
serious enough herself. ‘‘Would you honestly like 
to know?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, then, you must be careful.” 

“*Careful?’”? The word amused him. 

“I mean careful not to get me mixed up,” she 
said. “Careful not to mix up the girl you might 
hear somebody talking about with the me I honestly 
try to make you see. If you do get those two mixed 
up—well, the whole show’ll be spoiled!” 

“What makes you think so?” 
“Because it’s She checked herself, having 





begun to speak too impulsively; and she was dis- 
turbed, realizing in what tricky stuff she dealt. 
What had been on her lips to say was, “Because it’s 
happened before!” She changed to, “‘Because it’s 
so easy to spoil anything—easiest of all to spoil 
anything that’s pleasant.”’ 

“That might depend.”’ 


230 ALICE ADAMS 


“No; it’s so. And if you care at all about—about 
knowing a girl who'd like someone to know her +2 





“Just ‘someone?’ That’s disappointing.” 

*Well—you,” she said. 

“Tell me how ‘careful’ you want me to be, then!” 

“Well, don’t you think it would be nice if you 
didn’t give anybody the chance to talk about me the 
way—the way I’ve just been talking about Hen- 
rietta Lamb?” 

With that they laughed together, and he said, 

“You may be cutting me off from a great deal of 
information, you know.” 

“Yes,” Alice admitted. “Somebody might begin 
to praise me to you, too; so it’s dangerous to ask you 
to change the subject if I ever happen to be men- 
tioned. But after all ” She paused. 

“After all’ isn’t the end of a thought, is it?” 

“Sometimes it is of a girl’s thought; I suppose 





men are neater about their thoughts, and always 
finish ’em. It isn’t the end of the thought I had 
then, though.” 

“What is the end of it?” 

She looked at him impulsively. - “Oh, it’s foolish,” 
she said, and she laughed as laughs one who proposes 
something probably impossible. “But wouldn’t it 


ALICE ADAMS 231 


be pleasant if two people could ever just keep them- 
selves to themselves, so far as they two were con- 
cerned? I mean, if they could just manage to be 
friends without people talking about it, or talking to 
them about it?”’ 
“TI suppose that might be rather difficult,” he said, 
more amused than impressed by her idea. : 
“T don’t know: it might be done,” she returned, 
hopefully. “Especially in a town of this size; it’s 
grown so it’s quite a huge place these days. People 
can keep themselves to themselves in a big place 
better, you know. For instance, nobody knows 
that you and I are taking a walk together to- 
day.” : : 
“How absurd, when here we are on exhibition!” 
“No; we aren't.” 
“We aren’t?”’ ) 
“Not a bit of it!” she laughed. ‘“‘We were the 
other day, when you walked home with me, but 
anybody could tell that had just happened by 
chance, on account of your overtaking me; people 


~~ 


can always see things like that. But we’re not on 

exhibition now. Look where I’ve led you!” 
Amused and a little bewildered, he looked up and 

down the street, which was one of gaunt-faced apart- 


232 ALICE ADAMS 


ment-houses, old, sooty, frame boarding-houses, 
small groceries and drug-stores, laundries and one- 
room plumbers’ shops, with the sign of a clairvoy- 
ant here and there. 

“You see?” she said. “I’ve been leading you 
without your knowing it. Of course that’s because 
you’re new to the town, and you give yourself up 
to the guidance of an old citizen.” 

“T’m not so sure, Miss Adams. It might mean 
that I don’t care where I follow so long as I follow 
you.” 

“Very well,” she said. “I'd like you to keep on 
following me—at least long enough for me to show 
you that there’s something nicer ahead of us than 
this dingy street.” 

“Is that figurative?” he asked. 

“Might be!” she returned, gaily. “‘There’s a 
pretty little park at the end, but it’s very proletarian, 
and nobody you and I know will be more likely to 
see us there than on this street.” 


>? 


‘What an imagination you have!” he exclaimed. 
*“You turn our proper little walk into a Parisian 
adventure.” 

She looked at him in what seemed to be a mo- 


mentary grave puzzlement. “Perhaps you feel 


ALICE ADAMS 233 


that a Parisian adventure mightn’t please your—your 
relatives?” 

‘‘Why, no,” he returned. ‘“‘You seem to think 
of them oftener than I do.” 

This appeared to amuse Alice, or at least to please 
her, for she laughed. “Then I can afford to quit 
thinking of them, I suppose. It’s only that I used 
to be quite a friend of Mildred’s—but there! we 
needn’t to go into that. Ive never been a friend of 
Henrietta Lamb’s, though, and I almost wish she 
weren't taking such pains to be a friend of yours.”’ 

“Oh, but she’s not. It’s all on account of “4 

“On Mildred’s account,” Alice finished this for 
him, coolly. “Yes, of course.” 





“Tt’s on account of the two families,” he was at 
pains to explain, a little awkwardly. “It’s because 
I’m a relative of the Palmers, and the Palmers and 
the Lambs seem to be old family friends.” 

“Something the Adamses certainly are not,” 
Alice said. “Not with either of ’em; particularly 
not with the Lambs!” And here, scarce aware of 
what impelled her, she returned to her former 
elaborations and colourings. “You see, the differ- 
ences between Henrietta and me aren’t entirely 
personal: I couldn’t go to her house even if I liked 


234 ALICE ADAMS 


her. The Lambs and Adamses don’t get on with 
each other, and we’ve just about come to the 
breaking-point as it happens.” 

“T hope it’s nothing to bother you.” 

“Why? A lot of things bother me.” 

“I’m sorry they do,” he said, and seemed simply 
to mean it. 

She nodded gratefully. “That’s nice of you, Mr. 
Russell. It helps. The break between the Adamses 
and the Lambs is a pretty bothersome thing. It’s 
been coming on a long time.” She sighed deeply, 
and the sigh was half genuine; this half being for her 
father, but the other half probably belonged to her 
instinctive rendering of Juliet Capulet, daughter to 
a warring house. “I hate it all so!’’ she added. 

“Of course you must.” 

“IT suppose most quarrels between families are on 
account of business,” she said. “‘That’s why they’re 
so sordid. Certainly the Lambs seem a sordid lot to 
me, though of course I’m biased.” And with that 
she began to sketch a history of the commercial 
antagonism that had risen between the Adamses 
and the Lambs. 

The sketching was spontaneous and dramatic. 
Mathematics had no part in it; nor was there ac- 


ALICE ADAMS 235 


curate definition of Mr. Adams’s relation to the 
institution of Lamb and Company. ‘The point was 
| clouded, in fact; though that might easily be set 
down to the general haziness of young ladies con- 
fronted with the mysteries of trade or commerce. 
Mr. Adams either had been a vague sort of junior 
member of the firm, it appeared, or else he should 
have been made some such thing; at all events, he 
was an old mainstay of the business; and he, as 
much as any Lamb, had helped to build up the 
prosperity ef the company. But at last, tired of 
providing so much intelligence and energy for which 
other people toek profit greater than his own, he 
had decided to leave the company and found a 
business entirely for himself. The Lambs were 
going to be enraged when they learned what was 
afoot. 

Such was the impression, a little misted, wrought 
by Alice’s quick narrative. But there was dolorous 
fact behind it: Adams had succumbed. 

His wife, grave and nervous, rather than trium- 
phant, in success, had told their daughter that the 
great J. A. would be furious and possibly vindictive. 
Adams was afraid of him, she said. 

“But what for, mama?’ Alice asked, simce this 


236 ALICE ADAMS 


seemed a turn of affairs out of reason. “What in 
the world has Mr. Lamb to do with papa’s leaving 
the company to set up for himself? What right 
has he to be angry about it? If he’s such a friend as 
he claims to be, I should think he’d be glad—that is, 
if the glue factory turns out well. What will he be 
angry for?” 

Mrs. Adams gave Alice an uneasy glance, hesi- 
tated, and then explained that a resignation from 
Lamb’s had always been looked upon, especially by 
“that old man,” as treachery. You were supposed 
to die in the service, she said bitterly, and her 
daughter, a little mystified, accepted this explana- 
tion. Adams had not spoken to her of his surrender; 
he seemed not inclined to speak to her at all, or to 
any one. 

Alice was not serious too long, and she began to 
laugh as she came to the end of her decorative sketch. 
“After all, the whole thing is perfectly ridiculous,”’ 
she said. ‘In fact, it’s funny! 'That’s on account 
of what papa’s going to throw over the Lamb 
business for/ To save your life you couldn’t imagine 
what he’s going to do!” 

“TI won’t try, then,” Russell assented. 

“It takes all the romance out of me,” she laughed. 


ALICE ADAMS 237 


“You'll never go for a Parisian walk with me again, 
after I tell you what I'll be heiress to.”” They had 
come to the entrance of the little park; and, as 
Alice had said, it was a pretty place, especially on a 
day so radiant. Trees of the oldest forest stood 
there, hale and serene over the trim, bright grass; 
and the proletarians had not come from their fac- 
tories at this hour; only a few mothers and their 
babies were to be seen, here and there, in the shade. 
“T think T’ll postpone telling you about it till we 
get nearly home again,” Alice said, as they began to 
saunter down one of the gravelled paths. “There’s 
a bench beside a spring farther on; we can sit there 
and talk about a lot of things—things not so sticky 
as my dowry’s going to be.” 

**<Sticky?’”’ he echoed. “‘ What in the world 2 

She laughed despairingly. 





“A glue factory!” 

Then he laughed, too, as much from friendliness as 
from amusement; and she remembered to tell him 
that the project of a glue factory was still “an Adams 
secret.””> It would be known soon, however, she 
added; and the whole Lamb connection would 
probably begin saying all sorts of things, heaven 
knew what! 


238 ALICE ADAMS 


Thus Alice built her walls of flimsy, working 
always gaily, or with at least the air of gaiety; and 
even as she rattled on, there was somewhere in 
her mind a constant little wonder. Everything 
she said seemed to be necessary to support some- 
thing else she had said. How had it happened? 
She found herself telling him that since her father 
had decided on making so great a change in his 
ways, she and her mother hoped at last to persuade 
him to give up that “foolish little house”? he had 
been so obstinate about; and she checked herself 
abruptly on this declivity just as she was about 
to slide into a remark concerning her own preference 
for a “country place.” Discretion caught her in 
time; and something else, in company with dis- 
cretion, caught her, for she stopped short in her 
talk and blushed. 

They had taken possession of the bench beside 
the spring, by this time; and Russell, his elbow on 
the back of the bench and his chin on his hand, the 
better to look at her, had no guess at the cause of 
the blush, but was content to find it lovely. At 
his first sight of Alice she had seemed pretty in the 
particular way of being pretty that he happened 
to like best; and, with every moment he spent with 


ALICE ADAMS 239 


her, this prettiness appeared to increase. He felt 
that he could not look at her enough: his gaze 
followed the fluttering of the graceful hands in almost 
continual gesture as she talked; then lifted happily 
to the vivacious face again. She charmed him. 

After her abrupt pause, she sighed, then looked 
at him with her eyebrows lifted in a comedy appeal. 
“You haven’t said you wouldn’t give Henrietta the 
chance,” she said, in the softest voice that can still 
have a little laugh running in it. 

He was puzzled. “Give Henrietta the chance?”’ 

“You know! You'll let me keep on being un- 
fair, won’t you? Not give the other girls a chance 
to get even?” 

He promised, heartily. 


CHAPTER XV 


LICE had said that no one who knew either 
Russell or herself would be likely to see 
them in the park or upon the dingy street; 

but although they returned by that same ungenteel 
thoroughfare they were seen by a person who 
knew them both. Also, with some surprise on the 
part of Russell, and something more poignant 
than surprise for Alice, they saw this person. 

All of the dingy street was ugly, but the greater 
part of it appeared to be honest. The two pedes- 
trians came upon a block or two, however, where it 
offered suggestions of a less upright character, like 
a steady enough workingman with a naughty book 
sticking out of his pocket. Three or four dim > 
shops, a single story in height, exhibited foul sign- 
boards, yet fair enough so far as the wording went; 
one proclaiming a tobacconist, one a junk-dealer, one 
a dispenser of “soft drinks and cigars.” The most 
credulous would have doubted these signboards; 


for the craft of the modern tradesman is exerted to 
240 














“She had seemed pretty in the particular way he liked 
best; and with every moment he spent with her, this pretti- 
ness appeared to increase.” 





ALICE ADAMS 241 


lure indoors the passing glance, since if the glance 
is pleased the feet may follow; but this alleged 
tobacconist and his neighbours had long been fond 
of dust on their windows, evidently, and shades 
were pulled far down on the glass of their doors. 
Thus the public eye, small of pupil in the light of 
the open street, was intentionally not invited to the 
dusky interiors. Something different from mere 
lack of enterprise was apparent; and the signboards 
might have been omitted; they were pains thrown 
away, since it was plain to the world that the busi- 
ness parts of these shops were the brighter back 
rooms implied by the dark front rooms; and that 
the commerce there was in perilous new liquors and 
in dice and rough girls. 

Nothing could have been more innocent than the 
serenity with which these wicked little places re- 
vealed themselves for what they were; and, bound 
by this final tie of guilelessness, they stood together 
in a row which ended with a companionable barber- 
shop, much like them. Beyond was a series of 
soot-harried frame two-story houses, once part of a 
cheerful neighbourhood when the town was middle- 
aged and settled, and not old and growing. These 
houses, all carrying the label, “Rooms,” had the 


242 ALICE ADAMS 


worried look of vacancy that houses have when 
they are too full of everybody without being any- 
body’s home; and there was, too, a surreptitious 
air about them, as if, like the false little shops, they 
advertised something by concealing it. 

One of them—the one next to the barber-shop— 
had across its front an ample, jig-sawed veranda, 
where aforetime, no doubt, the father of a family 
had fanned himself with a palm-leaf fan on Sunday 
afternoons, watching the surreys go by, and where 
his daughter listened to mandolins and badinage 
on starlit evenings; but, although youth still held 
the veranda, both the youth and the veranda were 
in decay. The four or five young men who lounged 
there this afternoon were of a type known to shady 
pool-parlours. Hats found no favour with them; 
all of them wore caps; and their tight clothes, ap- 
parently from a common source, showed a vivacious 
fancy for oblique pockets, false belts, and Easter- 
egg colourings. Another thing common to the group 
was the expression of eye and mouth; and Alice, in 
the midst of her other thoughts, had a distasteful 
thought about this. 

The veranda was within a dozen feet of the side- 
walk, and as she and her escort came nearer, she 


ALICE ADAMS 243 


took note of the young men, her face hardening a 
little, even before she suspected there might be a 
resemblance between them and any one she knew. 
Then she observed that each of these loungers wore 
not for the occasion, but as of habit, a look of fur- 
tively amused contempt; the mouth smiled to one 
side as if not to dislodge a cigarette, while the eyes 
kept languidly superior. All at once Alice was 
reminded of Walter; and the slight frown caused 
by this idea had just begun to darken her forehead 
when Walter himself stepped out of the open door of 
the house and appeared upon the veranda. Upon 
his head was a new straw hat, and in his hand was 
a Malacca stick with an ivory top, for Alice had 
finally decided against it for herself and had given 
it to him. His mood was lively: he twirled the 
stick through his fingers like a drum-major’s baton, 
and whistled loudly. 

Moreover, he was indeed accompanied. With 
him was a thin girl who had made a violent black- 
and-white poster of herself: black dress, black 
flimsy boa, black stockings, white slippers, great 
black hat down upon the black eyes; and beneath 
the hat a curve of cheek and chin made white as 
whitewash, and in strong bilateral motion with gum. 


244, ALICE ADAMS 


The loungers on the veranda were familiars of the 
pair; hailed them with cacklings; and one began to 
sing, in a voice all tin: 

“Then my skirt, Sal, and me did go 
Right straight to the moving-pitcher show. 
Oh, you bashful vamp!”’ 

The girl laughed airily. ‘God, but you guys are 
wise!”? she said. ‘‘Come on, Wallie.”’ 

Walter stared at his sister; then grinned faintly, 
and nodded at Russell as the latter lifted his hat 
in salutation. Alice uttered an incoherent syllable 
of exclamation, and, as she began to walk faster, she 
bit her lip hard, not in order to look wistful, this time, 
but to help her keep tears of anger from her eyes. 

Russell laughed cheerfully. “Your brother cer- 
tainly seems to have found the place for ‘colour’ to- 
day,” he said. ‘That girl’s talk must be full of it.” 

But Alice had forgotten the colour she herself had 
used in accounting for Walter’s peculiarities, and 
she did not understand. ‘‘ What?” she said, huskily. 

“Don’t you remember telling me about him? 
How he was going to write, probably, and would ga 
anywhere to pick up types and get them to talk?” 

She kept her eyes ahead, and said sharply, “I 
think his literary tastes scarcely cover this case!’’ 


ALICE ADAMS 245 


“Don’t be too sure. He didn’t look at all dis- 
concerted. He didn’t seem to mind your seeing 
him.” 

“That’s all the worse, isn’t it?” 

“Why, no,” her friend said, genially. “It means 
he didn’t consider that he was engaged in anything 
out of the way. You can’t expect to understand 
everything boys do at his age; they do all sorts of 
queer things, and outgrow them. Your brother 
evidently has a taste for queer people, and very 
likely he’s been at least half sincere when he’s made 
you believe he had a literary motive behind it. We 
all go through——_”’ 

“Thanks, Mr. Russell,” she interrupted. ‘“‘Let’s 
don’t say any more.” 

He looked at her flushed face and enlarged eyes; 
and he liked her all the better for her indignation: 
this was how good sisters ought to feel, he thought, 
failing to understand that most of what she felt was 
not about Walter. He ventured only a word more. 
“Try not to mind it so much; it really doesn’t 
_ amount to anything.” 

She shook her head, and they went on in silence; 
she did not look at him again until they stopped 
before her own house. Then she gave him only one 


246 ALICE ADAMS 


glimpse of her eyes before she looked down. “It’s 
spoiled, isn’t it?’’ she said, in a low voice. 

“What's ‘spoiled?’” 

“Our walk—well, everything. Somehow it al- 
ways—is.” 

***Always is’ what?” he asked. 

Spoiled,” she said. | 

He laughed at that; but without looking at him 
she suddenly offered him her hand, and, as he took 
it, he felt a hurried, violent pressure upon his fingers, 
as if she meant to thank him almost passionately for 
being kind. She was gone before he could speak to 
her again. 


In her room, with the door locked, she did not go 
to her mirror, but to her bed, flinging herself face 
down, not caring how far the pillows put her hat 
awry. Sheer grief had followed her anger; grief for 
the calamitous end of her bright afternoon, grief 
for the “end of everything,” as she thought then. 
Nevertheless, she gradually grew more composed, 
and, when her mother tapped on the door presently, 
let her in. Mrs. Adams looked at her with quick 
apprehension. 

“Oh, poor child! Wasn’t he——” 


ALICE ADAMS RAT 


Alice told her. “You see how it—how it made 
me look, mama,” she quavered, having concluded 
her narrative. “I’d tried to cover up Walter’s 
awiulness at the dance with that story about his 
being ‘literary,’ but no story was big enough to cover 
this up—and oh! it must make him think I tell 
stories about other things!” 

“No, no, no!”’ Mrs. Adams protested. “Don’t 
you see? At the worst, all he could think is that 
Walter told stories to you about why he likes to be 
with such dreadful people, and you believed them. 
That’s all he’d think; don’t you see?”’ 

Alice’s wet eyes began to show a little hopefulness. 
“You honestly think it might be that way, mama?” 

“Why, from what you’ve told me he said, I 
know it’s that way. Didn’t he say he wanted to 
come again?” 

*“N-no,”’ Alice said, uncertainly. ‘“‘Dut I think he 
will. At least I begin to think so now. He is 
She stopped. 





“From all you tell me, he seems to be a very 
desirable young man,” Mrs. Adams said, primly. 

Her daughter was silent for several moments; 
then new tears gathered upon her downcast lashes. 
**He’s just—dear!”’ she faltered. 


248 ALICE ADAMS 


Mrs. Adams nodded. ‘“‘He’s told you he isn’t 
engaged, hasn’t he?” | 

“No. But I know he isn’t. Maybe when he 
first came here he was near it, but I know he’s 
not.” 

“I guess Mildred Palmer would lzke him to be, all 
right!’’ Mrs. Adams was frank enough to say, 
rather triumphantly; and Alice, with a lowered 
head, murmured: 

** Anybody—would.”’ 

The words were all but inaudible. 

**Don’t you worry,” her mother said, and patted 
her on the shoulder. “Everything will come out 
all right; don’t you fear, Alice. Can’t you see that 
beside any other girl in town you're just a perfect 
queen? Do you think any young man that wasn’t 
prejudiced, or something, would need more than 
just one look to——” 

But Alice moved away from the caressing hand. 
“Never mind, mama. I wonder he looks at me at 
all. And if he does again, after seeing my brother 
with those horrible people——” 

“Now, now!” Mrs. Adams interrupted, ex- 
postulating mournfully. “I’m sure Walter’s a good 


bo of 





ALICE ADAMS 249 


“You are?” Alice cried, with a sudden vigour. 
“You are?” 

“I’m sure he’s good, yes—and if he isn’t, it’s not 
his fault. It’s mine.” 

“What nonsense!” 

“No, it’s true,” Mrs. Adams lamented. “I 
tried to bring him up to be gocd, God knows; and 
when he was little he was the best boy I ever saw. 
When he came from Sunday-school he’d always run 
to me and we'd go over the lesson together; and he 
let me come in his room at night to hear his prayers 
almost until he was sixteen. Most boys won’t 
do that with their mothers—not nearly that long. 
I tried so hard to bring him up right—but if any- 
thing’s gone wrong it’s my fault.”’ 

“How could it be? You’ve just said ‘ 

“It’s because I didn’t make your father take 





this—this new step earlier. Then Walter might 
have had all the advantages that other-——” 

“Oh, mama, please!” Alice begged her. “Let’s 
don’t go over all that again. Isn’t it more im- 
portant to think what’s to be done about him? Is 
he going to be allowed to go on disgracing us as he 
does?” 

Mrs. Adams sighed profoundly. “I don’t know 


250 ALICE ADAMS 


what to do,” she confessed, unhappily. ‘Your 
father’s so upset about—about this new step he’s 
taking—TI don’t feel as if we ought to——”’ 

“No, no!” Alice cried. ‘“‘Papa mustn’t be dis- 
tressed with this, on top of everything else. But 
something’s got to be done about Walter.” 

“What can be?” her mother asked, helplessly. 
“What can be?” 

Alice admitted that she didn’t know. 


At dinner, an hour later, Walter’s habitually 
veiled glance lifted, now and then, to touch her 
furtively;—he was waiting, as he would have said, 
for her to “spring it”’; and he had prepared a brief 
and sincere defense to the effect that he made his 
own living, and would like to inquire whose business 
it was to offer intrusive comment upon his private 
conduct. But she said nothing, while his father and 
mother were as silent as she. Walter concluded 
that there was to be no attack, but changed his 
mind when his father, who ate only a little, and brood- 
ingly at that, rose to leave the table and spoke to him. 

“Walter,” he said, ““when you’ve finished I wish 
you'd come up to my room. I got something I 
want to say to you.” 


ALICE ADAMS 251 


Walter shot a hard look at his apathetic sister, 
then turned to his father. “Make it to-morrow,” he 
said. ‘This is Satad’y night and I got a date.” 

“No,” Adams said, frowning. “You come up 
before you go out. It’s important.” 

“All right; I’ve had all I (want to eat,” Walter 
returned. “I got a few minutes. Make it quick.” 

He followed his father upstairs, and when they 
were in the room togetner Adams shut the door, sat 
down, and began to rub his knees. 

““Rheumatism?”’ the boy inquired, slyly. ‘“‘That 
what you want to talk to me about?” 

“No.” But Adams did not go on; he seemed to 
be in difficulties for words, and Walter decided to 
help him. 

**Hop ahead and spring it,” he said. “Get it off 
your mind:» [ll tell the world J should worry! You 
aren’t goin’ to bother me any, so why bother your- 
self? Alice hopped home and told you she saw me 
playin’ around with some pretty gay-lookin’ berries 


23 





and you 
“Alice?” his father said, obviously surprised. 
“It’s nothing about Alice.” 
“Didn’t she tell you . 
“TI haven’t talked with her all day.” 





252 ALICE ADAMS 


“Oh, I see,” Walter said. “She told mother and 
mother told you.” 

“No, neither of ’em have told me sult What 
was there to tell?” 

Walter laughed. “Oh, it’s nothin’,” he said. 
“IT was just startin’ out to buy a girl friend o’ mine 
a rhinestone buckle I lost to her on a bet, this after- 
noon, and Alice came along with that big Russell 
fish; and I thought she looked sore. She expects me 
to like the kind she likes, and I don’t like ’em. I 
thought she’d prob’ly got you all stirred up about it.”’ 

“No, no,” his father said, peevishly. “I don’t 
know anything about it, and I don’t care to know 
anything about it. I want to talk to you about 
something important.” 

Then, as he was again silent, Walter said, “ Well, 
talk about it; I’m listening.” 

“It’s this,” Adams began, heavily. “It’s about me 
going into this glue business. Your mother’s told 
you, hasn’t she?” 

“She said you were goin’, to leave the old place 
down-town and start a glue factory. That’s all I 
know about it; I got my own affairs to ’tend to.” 

“Well, this is your affair,” his father said, frowning. 
“You can’t stay with Lamb and Company.” 


ALICE ADAMS 253 


Walter looked a little startled. “‘What you mean, 
I can’t? Why not?” 

“You’ve got to help me,’”’ Adams explained slowly; 
and he frowned more deeply, as if the interview were 
growing increasingly laborious for him. “It’s going 
to be a big pull to get this business on its feet.” 

*“Yes!’’ Walter exclaimed with a sharp skepticism. 
“I should say it was!” He stared at his father 
incredulously. ‘Look here; aren’t you just a little 
bit sudden, the way you're goin” about things? 
You’ve let mother shove you a little too fast, haven’t 
you? Do you know anything about what it means 
to set up a new business these days?”’ 

“Yes, I know all about it,” Adams said. “About 
this business, I do.”’ 

“How do you?” 

“Because I made a long study of it. I’m not 
afraid of going about it the wrong way; but it’s a hard 
job and you'll have to put in all whatever sense and 
strength you’ve got.” 

Walter began to breathe quickly, and his lips were 
agitated; then he set them obstinately. “Oh, I will,”’ 
he said. 

“Yes, you will,’ Adams returned, not noticing 
that his son’s inflection was satiric. “It’s going to 


254 ALICE ADAMS 


take every bit of energy in your body, and all the 
energy I got left in mine, and every cent of the 
little I’ve saved, besides something I'll have to raise 
on this house. I’m going right at it, now I’ve got to; 
and you'll have to quit Lamb’s by the end of next 
week.” 

“Oh, I will?” Walter’s voice grew louder, and 
there was a shrillness in it. “I got to quit Lamb’s 
the end of next week, have I?”’ He stepped forward, 
angrily. “Listen!” he said. “I’m not walkin’ out 
o’ Lamb’s, see? I’m not quittin’ down there: I 
stay with ’em, see?” 

Adams looked up at him, astonished. “ You’ll 
leave there next Saturday,” he said. “I’ve got to 
have you.” 

“You don’t anything o’ the kind,”’ Walter told 
him, sharply. “Do you expect to pay me any- 
thing?” 

“Td pay you about what you been getting down — 
there.” 

“Then pay somebody else; J don’t know anything 
about glue. You get somebody else.” 

“No. You’ve got to——” 

Walter cut him off with the utmost vehemence. 
“Don’t tell me what I got to do! J know what I 


ALICE ADAMS 255 


got to do better’n you, I guess! I stay at Lamb’s, 
see?”’ 

Adams rose angrily. ‘You'll do what I tell you. 
You can’t stay down there.” 

“Why can’t I?” 

**Because I won’t let you.” 

“Listen! Keep on not lettin’ me: I'll be there just 
the same.” 

At that his father broke into a sour laughter. 
*‘ They won’t let you, Walter! They won’t have you 
down there after they find out I’m going.” 

“Why won’t they? You don’t think they’re goin’ 
to be all shot to pieces over losin’ you, do you?”’ 

I tell you they won’t let you stay,” his father 
insisted, loudly. 

“Why, what do they care whether you go or 
not?” 

“They'll care enough to fire you, my boy!” 

**Look here, then; show me why.” 

“They'll do it!” 

“Yes,” Walter jeered; “you keep sayin’ they will, 
but when I ask you to show me why, you keep sayin’ 
they will! That makes little headway with me, I 
ean tell you!” 

Adams groaned, and, rubbing his head, began to 


256 ALICE ADAMS 


pace the floor. Walter’s refusal was something he 
had not anticipated; and he felt the weakness of his 
own attempt to meet it: he seemed powerless to do 
anything but utter angry words, which, as Walter said, 
made little headway. “‘Oh, my, my!” he muttered, 
“Oh, my, my!” 

Walter, usually sallow, had grown pale: he watched 
his father narrowly, and now took a sudden resolu- 
tion. “Look here,’ he said. ““When you say 
Lamb’s is likely to fire me because you’re goin’ to 
quit, you talk like the people that have to be locked 
up. Idon’t know where you get such things in | 
your head; Lamb and Company won’t know you're 
gone. Listen: I can stay there long as I want 
to. But [ll tell you what I'll do: make it worth my 
while and I’ll hook up with your old glue factory, 
after all.” 

Adams stopped his pacing abruptly, and stared 
at him. ‘“‘‘Make it worth your while?? What you 
mean?” 

“I got a good use for three hundred dollars right 
now, Walter said. “Let me have it and I'll quit 
Lamb’s to work for you. Don’t let me have it and 
I swear I won't!” 

*‘Are you crazy?” 


ALICE ADAMS 257 


“Is everybody crazy that needs three hundred 
dollars?” 

“Yes,” Adams said. ‘They are if they ask me for 
it, when I got to stretch every cent I can lay my 
hands on to make it look like a dollar!” 

“You won’t do it?” 

Adams burst out at him. “You little fool! If I 
had three hundred dollars to throw away, besides the 
pay I expected to give you, haven’t you got sense 
enough to see I could hire a man worth three hundred 
dollars more to me than you'd be? It’s a fine time to 
ask me for three hundred dollars, isn’t it! What 
for? Rhinestone buckles to throw around on your 
‘girl friends?? Shameon you! Ask me to bribe you 
to help yourself and your own family!” 

**T’ll give you a last chance,”’ Walter said. “Either 
you do what I want, or I won’t do what you want. 
Don’t ask me again after this, because——”’ 

Adams interrupted him fiercely. “‘Ask you 
again!’ Don’t worry about that, my boy! AlllI ask 
you is to get out o’ my room.” 

‘Look here,’ Walter said, quietly; and his lopsided 
smile distorted his livid cheek. ‘‘ Look here: I expect 
you wouldn’t give me three hundred dollars to save 
my life, would you?” 


258 ALICE ADAMS 


“You make me sick,”’ Adams said, in his bitterness. 
“Get out of here.” 

Walter went out, whistling; and Adams drooped 
into his old chair again as the door closed. “Oh, my, 
my!’’ he groaned. “Oh, Lordy, Lordy! The way 
of the transgressor——”’ 


CHAPTER XVI 


E MEANT his own transgression and his 
UH own way; for Walter’s stubborn refusal 
appeared to Adams just then as one of 
the inexplicable but righteous besettings he must 
encounter in following that way. “Oh, Lordy, 
Lord!” he groaned, and then, as resentment moved 
him—“That dang boy! Dang idiot!” Yet he 
knew himself for a greater idiot because he had not 
been able to tell Walter the truth. He could not 
bring himself to do it, nor even to state his case in its 
best terms; and that was because he felt that even 
in its best terms the case was a bad one. 

Of all his regrets the greatest was that nm a mo- 
ment of vanity and tenderness, twenty-five years 
ago, he had told his young wife a business secret. 
He had wanted to show how important her husband 
was becoming, and how much the head of the uni- 
verse, J. A. Lamb, trusted to his integrity and abil- 
ity. The great man had an idea: he thought of 
*branchmg out a little,’ he told Adams confiden- 
tially, and there were possibilities of profit in glue. , 

259 


260 ALICE ADAMS 


What he wanted was a liquid glue to be put into 
little bottles and sold cheaply. “The kind of 
thing that sells itself,’ he said; “the kind of thimg 
that pays its own small way as it goes along, until it 
has profits enough to begin advertising it right. 
Everybody has to use glue, and if I make mine con- 
venient and cheap, everybody’ll buy mine. But 
it’s got to be glue that’ll stick; it’s got to be the best; 
and if we find how to make it we’ve got to keep it a 
big secret, of course, or anybody can steal it from us. 
There was a man here last month; he knew a formula 
he wanted to sell me, ‘sight unseen’; but he was in 
such a hurry I got suspicious, and I found he’d 
managed to steal it, working for the big packers in 
their glue-works. We've got to find a better glue 
than that, anyhow. I’m going to set you and 
Campbell at it. You’re a practical, wide-awake 
young feller, and Campbell’s a mighty good chemist; 
I guess you two boys ought to make something 
happen.” 

His guess was shrewd enough. Working in a shed 
a little way outside the town, where their cheery 
employer visited them sometimes to study their 
malodorous stews, the two young men found what 


Lamb had set them to find. But Campbell was 


ALICE ADAMS 261 


thoughtful over the discovery. “Look here,” he 
said. ‘“‘Why ain’t this just about yours and mine? 
After all, it may be Lamb’s money that’s paid for 
the stuff we’ve used, but it hasn’t cost much.” 

**But he pays us,” Adams remonstrated, horrified 
by his companion’s idea. “He paid us to do it. It 
belongs absolutely to him.” 

**Oh, I know he thinks it does,’’ Campbell admitted, 
plaintively. “I suppose we’ve got to let him take 
it. It’s not patentable, and he’ll have to do pretty 
well by us when he starts his factory, because he’s 
got to depend on us to run the making of the stuff 
so that the workmen can’t get onto the process, 
You better ask him the same salary I do, and mine’s 
going to be high.” 

But the high salary, thus pleasantly imagined, was 
never paid. Campbell died of typhoid fever, that 
summer, leaving Adams and his employer the only 
possessors of the formula, an unwritten one; and 
Adams, pleased to think himself more important to 
the great man than ever, told his wife that there 
could be little doubt of his being put in sole charge of 
the prospective glue-works. Unfortunately, the en- 
terprise remained prospective. 

Its projector had already become “inveigled 


262 ALICE ADAMS 


into another side-line,”’ as he told Adams. One of 
his sons had persuaded him to take up a “cough- 
lozenge,’’ to be called the “Jalamb Balm Trochee”’; 
and the lozenge did well enough to amuse Mr. 
Lamb and occupy his spare time, which was really 
about all he had asked of the glue project. He had 
‘all the money anybody ought to want,” he said, 
when Adams urged him; and he could “start up 
this little glue side-line” at any time; the formula 
was safe in their two heads. 

At intervals Adams would seek opportunity to 
speak of “‘the little glue side-line”’ to his patron, and 
to suggest that the years were passing; but Lamb, 
petting other hobbies, had lost interest. “Oh, I'll 
start it up some day, maybe. If I don’t, I may 
turn it over to my heirs: it’s always an asset, worth 
something or other, of course. We'll probably take 
it up some day, though, you and I.” 

The sun persistently declined to rise on that day, 
and, as time went on, Adams saw that his rather 
timid urgings bored his employer, and he ceased to 
bring up the subject. Lamb apparently forgot all 
about glue, but Adams discovered that unfortunately 
there was someone else who remembered it. 3 


It’s really yours,” she argued, that painful day 


ALICE ADAMS 263 


when for the first time she suggested his using his 
knowledge for the benefit of himself and his family. 
**Mr. Campbell might have had a right to part of 
it, but he died and didn’t leave any kin, so it belongs 
to you.” 

“Suppose J. A. Lamb hired me to saw some 
wood,” Adams said. ‘‘ Would the sticks belong to 
me?” 

“He hasn’t got any right to take your invention 
and bury it,” she protested. “What good is it 
doing him if he doesn’t do anything with it? What 
good is it doing anybody? None in theworld! And 
what harm would it do him if you went ahead and 
did this for yourself and for your children? None 
in the world! And what could he do to you if he was 
old pig enough to get angry with you for doing it? 
He couldn’t do a single thing, and you’ve admitted 
he couldn’t, yourself. So what’s your reason for 
depriving your children and your wife of the benefits 
you know you could give ’em?”’ 

“Nothing but decency,’ he answered; and she 
had her reply ready for that. It seemed to him that, 
strive as he would, he could not reach her mind with 
even the plainest language; while everything that 
she said to him, with such vehemence, sounded 


264 ALICE ADAMS 


like so much obstinate gibberish. Over and over he 
pressed her with the same illustration, on the point 
of ownership, though he thought he was varying it. 
“Suppose he hired me to build him a house: would 
that be my house?”’ 
“He didn’t hire you to build him a house. You 


39> 





and Campbell invented 

“Look here: suppose you give a cook a soup-bone 
and some vegetables, and pay her to make you a 
soup: has she got a right to take and sell it? You 
know better!” 

“I know one thing: if that old man tried to keep 
your own invention from you he’s no better than a 
robber!” 

They never found any point of contaci in all their 
passionate d scussions of this ethical question; and 
the question was no more settled between them, now 
that Adams had succumbed, than it had ever been. 
But at least the wrangling about it was over: they 
were grave together, almost silent, and an uneasiness 
prevailed with her as much as with him. 

He had already been out of the house, to walk 
about the small green yard; and on Monday after- 
noon he sent for a taxicab and went down-town, 
but kept a long way from the “wholesale section,” 


ALICE ADAMS 265 


where stood the formidable old oblong pile of Lamb 
and Company. He arranged for the sale of the 
bonds he had laid away, and for placing a mortgage 
upon his house; and on his way home, after five 
o’clock, he went to see an old friend, a man whose 
term of service with Lamb and Company was even a 
little longer than his own. 

This veteran, returned from the day’s work, was 
sitting in front of the apartment house where he 
lived, but when the cab stopped at the curb he rose 
and came forward, offering a jocular greeting. “‘ Well, 
well, Virgil Adams! I always thought you had a 
sporty streak in you. Travel in your own hired 
private automobile nowadays, do you? Pamperin’ 
yourself because you’re still layin’ off sick, I expect.” 

“Oh, I’m well enough again, Charley Lohr,” 
Adams said, as he got out and shook hands. Then, 
telling the driver to wait, he took his friend’s arm, 
walked to the bench with him, and sat down. “I 
been practically well for some time,” he said. “I’m 
fixin’ to get into harness again.” 

Bein’ sick has certainly produced a change of heart 
in you,” his friend laughed. ‘“‘You’re the last man 
I ever expected to see blowin’ yourself—or anybody 
else—to a taxicab! For that matter, I never heard 


266 ALICE ADAMS 


of you bein’ in any kind of a cab, ’less’n it might be 
when you been pall-bearer for somebody. What’s 
come over you?”’ 

“Well, I got to turn over a new leaf, and that’s a 
fact,” Adams said. “I got a lot to do, and the only 
way to accomplish it, it’s got to be done soon, or I 
won’t have anything to live on while I’m doing it.” 

“What you talkin’ about? What you got to do 
except to get strong enough to come back to the old 
place?” 

Well ”’ Adams paused, then coughed, and said 
slowly, “Fact is, Charley Lohr, I been thinking likely 
I wouldn’t come back.” 

‘What! What you talkin’ about?” 

_ “No,” said Adams. “I been thinking I might 
likely kind of branch out on my own account.” 

**Well, I'll be doggoned!”’ Old Charley Lohr was 
amazed; he ruffled up his gray moustache with thumb 





and forefinger, leaving his mouth open beneath, like 
a dark cave under a tangled wintry thicket. “Why, 
that’s the doggonedest thing I ever heard!”’ he said. 
“I already am the oldest inhabitant down there, but 
if you go, there won’t be anybody else of the old 
generation at all. What on earth you thinkin’ of 
goin’ into?” 


ALICE ADAMS 267 


** Well,” said Adams, “I rather you didn’t mention 
it till I get started—of course anybody’ll know what 
it is by then—but I have been kind of planning to put 
a liquid glue on the market.” 

His friend, still ruffling the gray moustache upward, 
stared at him in frowning perplexity. ‘“‘Glue?” he 
said. “Glue!” 

“Yes. I been sort of milling over the idea of 
taking up something like that.” 

**Handlin’ it for some firm, you mean?”’ 

“No. Making it. Sort of a glue-works likely.” 

Lohr continued to frown. ‘“‘Let me think,” he 
said. ‘‘Didn’t the ole man have some such idea 
once, himself?” 

Adams leaned forward, rubbing his knees; and he 
coughed again before he spoke. “Well, yes. Fact is, 
he did. Thatis to say,a mighty long while agohe did.” 

“I remember,” said Lohr. “He never said any- 
thing about it that I know of; but seems to me I 
recollect we had sort of a rumour around the place 
how you and that man—le’s see, wasn’t his name 
Campbell, that died of typhoid fever? Yes, that was 
it, Campbell. Didn’t the ole man have you and 
Campbell workin’ sort of private on some glue 
proposition or other?” 


268 ALICE ADAMS 


“Yes, he did.””’ Adams nodded. “I found out a 
good deal about glue then, too.” 

“Been workin’ on it since, I suppose?” 

“Yes. Kept it in my mind and studied out new 
things about it.” 

Lohr looked serious. ‘“‘ Well, but see here,” he said. 
**T hope it ain’t anything the ole man’Il think might 
infringe on whatever he had you doin’ for him. You 
know how he is: broad-minded, liberal, free-handed 
man as walks this earth, and if he thought he owed 
you a cent he’d sell his right hand for a pork-chop to 
pay it, if that was the only way; but if he got the idea 
anybody was tryin’ to get the better of him, he’d sell 
both his hands, if he had to, to keep ’em from doin’ it. 
Yes, at eighty, he would! Not that I mean I think 
you might be tryin’ to get the better of him, Virg. 
You’re a mighty close ole codger, but such a thing 
ain’t in you. What I mean: I hope there ain’t any 
chance for the ole man to think you might be——”’ 

“Oh, no,”’ Adams interrupted. “As a matter of 
fact, I don’t believe he’ll everthink about it at all, and 
if he did he wouldn’t have any real right to feel 
offended at me: the process I’m going to use is one I 
expect to change and improve a lot different from the 
one Campbell and I worked on for him.” 


ALICE ADAMS 269 


“Well, that’s good,”’ said Lohr. ‘“‘Of course you 
know what you’re up to: you’re old enough, God 
knows!’ He laughed ruefully. “My, but it will 
seem funny to me—down there with you gone! I 
expect you and I both been gettin’ to be pretty much 
dead-wood in the place, the way the young fellows 
look at it, and the only one that’d miss either of us 
would be the other one! Have you told the ole man 
yet?”’ 

“Well ” Adams spoke laboriously. “‘No. No, 
I haven’t. I thought—vwell, that’s what I wanted 
to see you about.” 

“What can I do?” 

“T thought I’d write him a letter and get you to 





hand it to him for me.” 

*“My soul!” his friend exclaimed. “Why on 
earth don’t you just go down there and tell him?” 

Adams became pitiably embarrassed. He stam- 
mered, coughed, stammered again, wrinkling his face 
so deeply he seemed about to weep; but finally he 
eontrived to utter an apologetic laugh. “I ought 
to do that, of course; but in some way or other I just 
don’t seem to be able to—to manage it.” 


“Why in the world not?” the mystified Lohr 
inquired. | 


270 ALICE ADAMS 


“TI could hardly tell you—'less’n it is to say that 
when you been with one boss all your life it’s so— 
so kind of embarrassing—to quit him, I just can’t 
make up my mind to go and speak to him about it. 
No; I got it in my head a letter’s the only satisfactory 
way to do it, and I thought Id ask you to hand it to 
him.” 

‘Well, of course I don’t mind doin’ that for you,” 
Lohr said, mildly. “But why in the world don’t you 
just mail it to him?” 

“Well, I'll tell you,’ Adams returned. ‘You 
know, like that, it’d have to go through a clerk 
and that secretary of his, and I don’t know who all. 
There’s a couple of kind of delicate points I want to 
put in it: for instance, I want to explain to him how 
much improvement and so on I’m going to introduce 
on the old process I helped to work out with Campbell 
when we were working for him, so’t he’ll understand 
it’s a different article and no infringement at all. 
Then there’s another thing: you see all during while I 
was sick he had my salary paid to me—it amounts 
to considerable, I was on my back so long. Under 
the circumstances, because I’m quitting, I don’t feel 
as if I ought to accept it, and so I'll have a check for 
him in the letter to cover it, and I want to be sure he 


ALICE ADAMS 271 


knows it, and gets it personally. If it had to go 
through a lot of other people, the way it would if I 
put it in the mail, why, you can’t tell. So what I 
thought: if you’d hand it to him for me, and maybe if 
he happened to read it right then, or anything, it 
might be you’d notice whatever he’d happen to say 
about it—and you could tell me afterward.” 

* All right,” Lohr said. “Certainly if you’d rather 
do it that way, I'll hand it to him and tell you what 
he says; that is, if he says anything and I hear him. 
Got it written?” 

*No; I'll send it around to you last of the week.” 
Adams moved toward his taxicab. “Don’t say any- 
thing to anybody about it, Charley, especially till 
after that.”’ 

* All right.” 

“And, Charley, I'll be mighty obliged to you,” 
Adams said, and came back to shake hands in farewell. 
*There’s one thing more you might do—if you’d 
ever happen to feel like it.”” He kept his eyes rather 
vaguely fixed on a point above his friend’s head as he 
spoke, and his voice was not well controlled. “I 
been—I been down there a good many years and I 
may not ’a’ been so much use lately as I was at first, 
but I always tried to do my best for the old firm. If 


272 ALICE ADAMS 


anything turned out so’s they did kind of take offense 
with me, down there, why, just say a good word for 
me—if you’d happen to feel like it, maybe.” 

Old Charley Lohr assured him that he would speak 
a good word if opportunity became available; then, 
after the cab had driven away, he went up to his 
small apartment on the third floor and muttered 
ruminatively until his wife inquired what he was 
talking to himself about. 

“Ole Virg Adams,” he told her. “He’s out again 
after his long spell of sickness, and the way it looks 
to me he’d better stayed in bed.” 

“You mean he still looks too bad to be out?” 

“Oh, I expect he’s gettin’ his health back,” Lohr 
said, frowning. 

“Then what’s the matter with him? You mean 
he’s lost his mind?” 

“My goodness, but women do jump at conclu- 
sions!’’ he exclaimed. 

“Well,” said Mrs. Lohr, ‘‘what other conclusion 
did you leave me to jump at?” 

Her husband explained with a little heat: “‘ People 
can have a sickness that affects their mind, can’t 
they? Their mind can get some affected without 
bein’ lost, can’t it?” 


ALICE ADAMS 273 


“Then you mean the poor man’s mind does seem 
affected?” 

““Why, no; I’d scarcely go as far as that,” Lohr 
said, inconsistently, and declined to be more definite. 


Adams devoted the latter part of that evening to 
the composition of his letter—a disquieting task 
not completed when, at eleven o’clock, he heard his 
daughter coming up the stairs. She was singing to 
herself in a low, sweet voice, and Adams paused to 
listen incredulously, with his pen lifted and his 
mouth open, as if he heard the strangest sound in 
the world. Then he set down the pen upon a blotter, 
went to his door, and opened it, looking out at her as 
she came. 

“Well, dearie, you seem to be feeling pretty good,” 
he said. ‘‘ What you been doing?”’ 

“Just sitting out on the front steps, papa.” 

** All alone, I suppose.” 

*“No. Mr. Russell called.” 

“Oh, he did?”? Adams pretended to be sur- 
prised. “What all could you and he find to talk 
about till this hour o’ the night?” 

She laughed gaily. ‘You don’t know me, papa!” 

“How’s that?” 


O74 ALICE ADAMS 


*You’ve never found out that I always do all the 
talking.” 

*Didn’t you let him get a word in all evening?” 

“Oh, yes; every now and then.” | 

Adams took her hand and petted it. “Well, what 
did he say?” 

Alice gave him a radiant look and kissed him. 
**Not what you think!” she laughed; then slapped 
his cheek with saucy affection, pirouetted across the 
narrow hall and into her own room, and curtsied to 
him as she closed her door. 

Adams went back to his writing with a lighter 
heart; for since Alice was born she had been to him the 
apple of his eye, his own phrase in thinking of her; 
and what he was doing now was for her. He smiled 
as he picked up his pen to begin a new draft of the 
painful letter; but presently he looked puzzled. 
After all, she could be happy just as things were, it 
seemed. ‘Then why had he taken what his wife called 
‘this new step,’ which he had so long resisted? 

He could only sigh and wonder. “Life works out 
pretty peculiarly,” he thought; for he couldn’t go 
back now, though the reason he couldn’t was not 
clearly apparent. He had to go ahead. 


CHAPTER XVII 


E WAS out in his taxicab again the next 
H morning, and by noon he had seeured 
what he wanted. 

It was curiously significant that he worked so 
quickly. All the years during which his wife had 
pressed him toward his present shift he had sworn to 
himself, as well as to her, that he would never yield; 
and yet when he did yield he had no plans to make, 
because he found them already prepared and worked 
out in detail in his mind; as if he had long eontem- 
plated the “step” he believed himself incapable of 
taking. 

Sometimes he had thought of improving his in- 
come by exchanging his little collection of bonds for 
a “small rental property,”’ if he could find “a good 
buy”; and he had spent many of his spare hours 
rambling over the enormously spreading city and its 
purlieus, looking for the ideal “buy.” It remained 
unattainable, so far as he was concerned; but he 


found other things. 
275 


276 ALICE ADAMS 


Not twice a crow’s mile from his own house there 
was a dismal and slummish quarter, a decayed 
“industrial district’’ of earlier days. Most of the 
industries were small; some of them died, perishing 
of bankruptcy or fire; and a few had moved, leaving 
their shells. Of the relics, the best was a brick build- 
ing which had been the largest and most important 
factory in the quarter: it had been injured by a long 
vacancy almost as serious as a fire, in effect, and 
Adams had often guessed at the sum needed to put 
it m repair. 

When he passed it, he would look at it with an 
interest which he supposed detached and idly specu- 
lative. “‘That’d be just the thing,” he thought. 
**Tf a fellow had money enough, and took a notion to 
set up some new business on a big scale, this would be 
a pretty good place—to make glue, for instance, if 
that wasn’t out of the question, of course. It would 
take a lot of money, though; a great deal too much 
for me to expect to handle—even if I’d ever dream 
of doing such a thing.” 

Opposite the dismantled factory was a muddy, 
open lot of two acres or so, and near the middle of 
the lot, a long brick shed stood in a desolate aban- 
donment, not happily decorated by old coatings of 


ALICE ADAMS 277 


theatrical and medicinal advertisements. But the 
brick shed had two wooden ells, and, though both 
shed and ells were of a single story, here was empty 
space enough for a modest enterprise—“ space enough 
for almost anything, to start with,” Adams thought, 
as he walked through the low buildings, one day, 
when he was prospecting in that section. “Yes, I 
suppose I could swing this,” he thought. “If the 
process belonged to me, say, instead of being out of 
the question because it isn’t my property—or if I 
was the kind of man to do such a thing anyhow, 
here would be something I could probably get hold of 
pretty cheap. They’d want a lot of money for a 
lease on that big building over the way—but this, 
why, I should think it’d be practically nothing at all.” 

Then, by chance, meeting an agent he knew, he 
made inquiries—merely to satisfy a casual curiosity, 
he thought—and he found matters much as he had 
supposed, except that the owners of the big building 
did not wish to let, but to sell it, and this at a price 
so exorbitant that Adams laughed. But the long 
brick shed in the great muddy lot was for sale or to 
let, or “pretty near to be given away,” he learned, 
if anybody would take it. 

Adams took it now, though without seeing that he 


278 ALICE ADAMS 


had been destined to take it, and that some dreary 
wizard in the back of his head had foreseen all along 
that he would take it, and planned to be ready. He 
drove in his taxicab to look the place over again, 
then down-town to arrange for a lease; and came 
home to lunch with his wife and daughter. Things 
were “moving,” he told them. 

He boasted a little of having acted so decisively, 
and said that since the dang thing had to be done, it 
was “‘going to be done right /”? He was almost cheer. 
ful, in a feverish way, and when the cab came for him 
again, soon after lunch, he explained that he intended 
not only to get things done right, but also to “get 
’em done quick!’’ Alice, following him to the front 
door, looked at him anxiously and asked if she 
couldn’t help. He laughed at her grimly. 

“Then let me go along with you in the cab,” she 
begged. “You don’t look able to start in so hard, 
papa, just when you’re barely beginning to get your 
strength back. Do let me go with you and see if I 
can’t help—or at least take care of you if you should 
get to feeling badly.” 

He declined, but upon pressure let her put a tiny 
bottle of spirits of ammonia in his pocket, and 
promised to make use of it if he “felt faint or any- 


ALICE ADAMS 279 


thing.” Then he was off again; and the next morning 
had men at work in his sheds, though the wages he 
had to pay frightened him. 

He directed the workmen in every detail, hurrying 
them by example and exhortations, and receiving, in 
consequence, several declarations of independence, 
as well as one resignation, which took effect immedi- 
ately. “Yous capitalusts seem to think a man’s 
got nothin’ to do but break his back p’doosin’ wealth 
fer yous to squander,” the resigning person loudly 
complained. “You look out: the toiler’s day is 
a-comin’, and it ain’t so fur off, neither!” But the 
capitalist was already out of hearing, gone to find a 
man to take this orator’s place. 

By the end of the week, Adams felt that he had 
moved satisfactorily forward in his preparations for 
the simple equipment he needed; but he hated the 
pause of Sunday. He didn’t want any rest, he told 
Alice impatiently, when she suggested that the idle 
day might be good for him. 

Late that afternoon he walked over to the apart- 
ment house where old Charley Lohr lived, and gave 
his friend the letter he wanted the head of Lamb and 
Company to receive “personally.” “TI’ll take it as a 
mighty great favour in you to hand it to him person- 


280 ALICE ADAMS 


ally, Charley,”’ he said, in parting. ‘‘And you won’t 
forget, in case he says anything about it—and re- 


member if you ever do get a chance to put in a good 


33 





word for me later, you know 

Old Charley promised to remember, and, when 
Mrs. Lohr came out of the “kitchenette,” after the 
door closed, he said thoughtfully, “Just skin and 
bones.” 

“You mean Mr. Adams is?”’ Mrs. Lohr inquired. 

*“Who’d you think I meant?” he returned. ‘One 
o’ these partridges in the wall-paper?”’ 

“Did he look so badly?” 

“Looked kind of distracted to me,’’ her husband 
replied. “These little thin fellers can stand a heap 
sometimes, though. He’ll be over here again Mon- 
day.” 

“Did he say he would?” 

“No,” said Lohr. “But he will. You’ll see. 
He’ll be over to find out what the big boss says when 
T give him this letter. Expect I’d be kind of anxious, 
myself, if I was him.” 

“Why would you? What’s Mr. Adams doing to 
be so anxious about?” 

Lohr’s expression became one of reserve, the look 
of a man who has found that when he speaks his inner 


ALICE ADAMS 281 


thoughts his wife jumps too far to conclusions. “Oh, 
nothing,” he said. “Of course any man starting up a 
new business is bound to be pretty nervous a while. 
He’ll be over here to-morrow evening, all right; you'll 
see.” | 

The prediction was fulfilled: Adams arrived just 
after Mrs. Lohr had removed the dinner dishes to her 
“‘kitchenette’’; but Lohr had little information to 
give his caller. 

*He didn’t say a word, Virgil; nary a word. I 
took it into his office and handed it to him, and he 
just sat and read it; that’s all. I kind of stood 
around as long as I could, but he was sittin’ at his desk 
with his side to me, and he never turned around full 
toward me, as it were, so I couldn’t hardly even tell 
anything. All I know: he just read it.” 

“Well, but see here,” Adams began, nervously. 
“Well " 

‘Well what, Virg?” 

‘Well, but what did he say when he did speak?” 

*“He didn’t speak. Not so long I was in there, any- 
how. He just sat there and read it. Read kind of 
slow. Then, when he came to the end, he turned back 
and started to read it all over again. By that time 





there was three or four other men standin’ around 


282 ALICE ADAMS 


in the office waitin’ to speak to him, and I had to 


33 


go. 

Adams sighed, and stared at the floor, irresolute. 
Well, I'll be getting along back home then, I guess, 
Charley. So you’re sure you couldn’t tell anything 
what he might have thought about it, then?” 

**Not a thing in the world. I’ve told you all I 
know, Virg.” 

*““T guess so, I guess so,” Adams said, mournfully. 
*{ feel mighty obliged to you, Charley Lohr; mighty 
obliged. Good-night to you.” And he departed, 
sighing in perplexity. 

On his way home, preoccupied with many thoughts, 
he walked so slowly that once or twice he stopped and 
stood motionless for a few moments, without being 
aware of it; and when he reached the juncture of the 
sidewalk with the short brick path that led to his own 
front door, he stopped again, and stood for more 
than a minute. “Ah, I wish I knew,” he whispered, 
plaintively. “‘I do wish I knew what he thought 
about it.” 

He was roused by a laugh that came lightly from 
the little veranda near by. “Papa!” Alice called 
gaily. ‘What are you standing there muttering to 
yourself about?” 


ALICE ADAMS 283 


‘Oh, are you there, dearie?’’ he said, and came up 
the path. A tall figure rose from a chair on the 
veranda. 

‘Papa, this is Mr. Russell.” 

The two men shook hands, Adams saying, “Pleased 
to make your acquaintance,”’ as they looked at each 
other in the faint light diffused through the opaque 
glass in the upper part of the door. Adams’s im- 
pression was of a strong and tall young man, fashion- 
able but gentle; and Russell’s was of a dried, little old 
business man with a grizzled moustache, worried 
bright eyes, shapeless dark clothes, and a homely 
manner. 

“Nice evening,’? Adams said further, as their hands 
parted. “Nice time o’ year it is, but we don’t al- 
ways have as good weather as this; that’s the trouble 
of it. Well *? He went tothe door. “ Well—I bid 
you good evening,”’ he said, and retired within the 





house. 

Alice laughed. ‘‘He’s the old-fashionedest man in 
town, I suppose—and frightfully impressed with you, 
I could see!” 

** What nonsense!” said Russell. ‘How could any- 
body be impressed with me?” | 

“Why not? Because you’re quiet? Good gra- 


284 ALICE ADAMS 


cious! Don’t you know that you’re the most im- 
pressive sort? We chatterers spend all our time 
playing to you quiet people.” 

“Yes; we're only the audience.” 

“Only!” she echoed. ‘‘ Why, we live for you, 
and we can’t live without you.” ! 

*T wish you couldn’t,” said Russell. “That 
would be a new experience for both of us, wouldn’t 
it?” 

“Tt might be a rather bleak one for me,” she 
answered, lightly. “I’m afraid I’ll miss these sum- 
mer evenings with you when they’re over. I'll miss 
them enough, thanks!” 

**Do they have to be over some time?” he asked. 

“Oh, everything’s over some time, isn’t it?” 

Russell laughed at her. ‘‘Don’t let’s look so far 
ahead as that,” he said. ‘“‘We don’t need to be al- 
ready thinking of the cemetery, do we?” 

“T didn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Our 
summer evenings will be over before then, Mr. 
Russell.” 

“Why?” he asked. 

“Good heavens!” she said. ‘‘Thete’s laconic 
eloquence: almost a proposal in a single word! Never 
mind, I shan’t hold you to it. But to answer you: 


ALICE ADAMS 285 


well, I’m always looking ahead, and somehow I 
usually see about how things are coming out.” 

“Yes,” he said. ‘‘I suppose most of us do; at least 
it seems as if we did, because we so seldom feel sur- 
prised by the way they do come out. But maybe 
that’s only because life isn’t like a play in a theatre, 
and most things come about so gradually we get 
used to them.” 

‘“*No, I’m sure I can see quite a long way ahead,” 
she insisted, gravely. “‘And it doesn’t seem to me as 
if our summer evenings could last very long. Some- 
thing’ll interfere—somebody will, I mean—they’ll 


$3 





say something 

“What if they do?” 

She moved her shoulders in a little apprehensive 
shiver. “It'll change you,” she said. “I’m just 
sure something spiteful’s going to happen to me. 
You'll feel differently about—things.” 

““Now, isn’t that an idea!” he exclaimed. 

“Tt will,” she insisted. ‘I know something spite- 
ful’s going to happen!” 

**You seem possessed by a notion not a bit flatter- 
ing to me,” he remarked. 

“Oh, bug isn’t it? That’s just what it is! Why 
isn’t it?” 


286 ALICE ADAMS 


‘Because it implies that I’m made of such soft 
material the slightest breeze will mess meallup. I’m 
not so like that as I evidently appear; and if it’s true 
that we’re afraid other people will do the things we’d 
be most likely to do ourselves, it seems to me that I 
ought to be the one to be afraid. I ought to be 
afraid that somebody may say something about me 
to you that will make you believe I’m a professional 
forger.” 

“No. We both know they won’t,”’ she said. 
“We both know you're the sort of person everybody 
in the world says nice things about.”’ She lifted her 
hand to silence him as he laughed at this. ‘Oh, of 
course you are! I think perhaps you're a little 
flirtatious—most quiet men have that one sly way 
with ’em—oh, yes, they do! But you happen to be 
the kind of man everybody loves to praise. And if 
you weren’t, I shouldn’t hear anything terrible about 
you. I told you I was unpopular: I don’t see any- 
body at all any more. The only man except you 
who’s been to see me in a month is that fearful little 
fat Frank Dowling, and I sent word to him I wasn’t 
home. Nobody’d tell me of your wickedness, you 
see.” 

“Then let me break some news to you,” Russell 


ALICE ADAMS 287 


said. “Nobody would tell me of yours, either. 
Nobody’s even mentioned you to me.” 

She burlesqued a cry of anguish. ‘That zs ob- 
scurity! I suppose I’m too apt to forget that they 
say the population’s about half a million nowadays. 
There are other people to talk about, you feel, 
then?” 

“None that I want to,” he said. “But I should 
think the size of the place might relieve your mind of 
what seems to insist on burdening it. Besides, Vd 
rather you thought me a better man than you do.” 

““What kind of a man do I think you are?” 

“The kind affected by what’s said about people 
instead of by what they do themselves.” 

*“Aren’t you?” 

“No, I’m not,” he said. “If you want our sum- 
mer evenings to be over you'll have to drive me away 
yourself.” 

“Nobody else could?” 

Sol?” 

She was silent, leaning forward, with her elbows on 
her knees and her clasped hands against her lips. 
Then, not moving, she said softly: 

*Well—I won’t!” 
She was silent again, and he said nothing, but 


288 ALICE ADAMS 


looked at her, seeming to be content with looking. 
Her attitude was one only a graceful person should 
assume, but she was graceful; and, in the wan light, 
which made a prettily shaped mist of her, she had 
beauty. Perhaps it was beauty of the hour, and of 
the love scene almost made into form by what they 
had both just said, but she had it; and though beauty 
of the hour passes, he who sees it will long remember 
it and the hour when it came. 

“What are you thinking of?” he asked. 

She leaned back in her chair and did not answer at 
once. ‘Then she said: 

“I don’t know; I doubt if I was thinking of any- 
thing. It seems tomeI wasn’t. I think I was just 
being sort of sadly happy just then.” 

“Were you? Was it ‘sadly,’ too?” 

“Don’t you know?” she said. “It seems to me 
that only little children can be just happily happy. I 
think when we get older our happiest moments are 
like the one I had just then: it’s as if we heard strains 
of minor music running through them—oh, so sweet, 
but oh, so sad!”’ 

*“But what makes it sad for you?” 

**T don’t know,” she said, in a lighter tone. “Per- 
haps it’s a kind of useless foreboding I seem to have 


ALICE ADAMS 289 


pretty often. It may be that—or it may be poor 
papa.” 

“You are a funny, delightful girl, though!’’ Russell 
Jaughed. ‘When your father’s so well again that he 
goes out walking in the evenings!”’ 

*“He does too much walking,’ Alice said. “Too 
much altogether, over at his new plant. But there 
isn’t any stopping him.”’ She laughed and shook her 
head. ‘‘ When aman gets an ambition to be a multi- 
millionaire his family don’t appear to have much > 
weight with him. He'll walk all he wants to, in spite 
of them.” 

“I suppose so,’ Russell said, absently; then he 
leaned forward. “I wish I could understand better 
why you were ‘sadly’ happy.” 

Meanwhile, as Alice shed what further light she 
could on this point, the man ambitious to be a “‘multi- 
millionaire’? was indeed walking too much for his 
own good. He had gene to bed, hoping to sleep well 
and rise early for a long day’s work, but he could not 
rest, and now, in his nightgown and slippers, he was 
pacing the floor of his room. | 

“TI wish I did know,”’ he thought, over and over. 
**1I do wish I knew how he feels about it.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


T was a thought almost continuously in 
his mind, even when he was hardest at work; 
and, as the days went on and he could not free 

himself, he became querulous about it. ‘“‘I guess I’m 
the biggest dang fool alive,” he told his wife as they 
sat together one evening. “I got plenty else to 
bother me, without worrying my head off about what 
he thinks. I can’t help what he thinks; it’s too late 
for that. So why should I keep pestering myself 
about it?” 

“Tt'll wear off, Virgil,’’ Mrs. Adams said, reassur- 
ingly. She was gentle and sympathetic with him, 
and for the first time in many years he would come to 
sit with her and talk, when he had finished his day’s 
work. He had told her, evading her eye, “Oh, I 
don’t blame you. You didn’t get after me to do this 
on your own account; you couldn’t help it.” 

“Yes; but it don’t wear off,” he complained. 
“This afternoon I was showing the men how I wanted 


my vats to go, and I caught my fool self standing 
290 


ALICE ADAMS 291 


there saying to my fool self, ‘It’s funny I don’t hear 
how he feels about it from somebody.’ I was saying 
it aloud, almost—and it 7s funny I don’t hear any- 
thing!” 

“Well, you see what it means, don’t you, Virgil? 
It only means he hasn’t said anything to anybody 
about it. Don’t you think you’re getting kind of 
morbid over it?” 

*“Maybe, maybe,” he muttered. 

‘“Why, yes,” she said, briskly. “You don’t realize 
what a little bit of a thing all this is tohim. It’s 
peen a long, long while since the last time you even 
mentioned glue to him, and he’s prebably forgotten 
everything about it.” 

*You’re off your base; it isn’t like him to forget 
things,’’ Adams returned, peevishly. “He may seem 
to forget ’em, but he don’t.” 

“But he’s not thinking about this, or you’d have 
heard from him before now.”’ 

Her husband shook hishead. “Ah, that’s just it!” 
he said. “Why haven’t I heard from him?” 

**Tt’s all your morbidness, Virgil. Look at Walter: 
if Mr. Lamb held this up against you, would he still 
let Walter stay there? Wouldn’t he have discharged 
Walter if he felt angry with you?” 


292 ALICE ADAMS 


“That dang boy!” Adams said. ‘If he wanted to 
come with me now, I wouldn’t. hardly let him, 
What do you suppose makes him so bull-headed?” 

“But hasn’t he a right to choose for himself?” she 
asked. ‘‘I suppose he feels he ought to stick to what 
he thinks is sure pay. As soon as he sees that you’re 
going to succeed. with the glue-works he’ll want to be 
with you quick enough.” 

“Well, he better get a little sense in his head,” 
Adams returned, crossly.. “He wanted me to pay him 
a three-hundred-dollar bonus in advance, when any- 
body with a grain of common sense knows I need 
every penny I can lay my hands on!”’ 
~ “Never mind,” she said. “He'll come around 
later and be glad of the chance.” 

“He'll have to beg for it then! J won’t ask him 
again.” , 

“Oh, Walter will come out all right; you needn’t 
worry. And don’t you see that Mr. Lamb’s not 
discharging him means there’s no hard feeling against 
you, Virgil?” 

“T can’t make it out at all,” he said, frowning. 
“The only thing I can think it means is that J. A. 
‘Lamb is so fair-minded—and of course he 7s one of 
the fair-mindedest men alive—I suppose that’s the 


ALICE ADAMS 293 


reason he hasn’t fired Walter. He may know,” 
Adams concluded, morosely—‘“‘he may know that’s 
just another thing to make me feel all the meaner: 
keeping my boy there on a salary after I’ve done him 
an injury.” 

“Now, now!” she said, trying to comfort him. 
“You couldn’t do anybody an injury to save your 
life, and everybody knows it.” 

“Well, anybody ought to know I wouldn’t want to 
do an injury, but this world isn’t built so’t we can do 
just what we want.” He paused, reflecting. “Of 
course there may be one explanation of why Walter’s 
still there: J. A. maybe hasn’t noticed that he 7s 
there. There’s so many I expect he hardly knows 
him by sight.” 

“Well, just do quit thinking about it,” she urged 
him. “It only bothers you without doing any good. 
Don’t you know that?” 

Don’t I, though!” he laughed, feebly. “‘I know 
it better’n anybody! How funny that is: when you 
know thinking about a thing only pesters you without 
helping anything at all, and yet you keep right on 
pestering yourself with it!” 

“But why?” she said. ‘“‘ What’s the use when you 
know you haven’t done anything wrong, Virgil? 


294 ALICE ADAMS 


You said yourself you were going to improve the 
process so much it would be different from the old 
one, and you'd really have a right to it.” 

Adams had persuaded himself of this when he 
yielded; he had found it necessary to persuade him- 
self of it-—though there was a part of him, of course, 
that remamed unpersuaded; and this discomfiting 
part of him was what made his present trouble. 
“Yes, I know,” he said. ‘“‘That’s true, but I can’t 
quite seem to get away from the fact that the princi- 
ple of the process is a good deal the same—well, it’s 
more’n that; it’s just about the same as the one he 
hired Campbell and me to work out for him. Truth 
is, nobody could tell the difference, and I don’t know 
as there 7s any difference except in these improve- 
ments I’m making. Of course, the improvements 
do give me pretty near a perfect right to it, as a 
person might say; and that’s one of the things I 
thought of putting in my letter to him; but I was 
afraid he’d just think I was trying to make up ex- 
cuses, so I left it out. I kind of worried all the time 
I was writing that letter, because if he thought I was 
just making up excuses, why, it might set him just 
so much more against me.” 

Ever since Mrs, Adams had found that she was to 


ALICE ADAMS 295 


have her way, the depths of her eyes had been 
troubled by a continuous uneasiness; and, although 
she knew it was there, and sometimes veiled it by 
keeping the revealing eyes averted from her husband 
and children, she could not always cover it under that 
assumption of absent-mindedness. The uneasy look 
became vivid, and her voice was slightly tremulous 
now, as she said, “But what if he should be against 
you—although I don’t believe he is, of course—you 
told me he couldn’t do anything to you, Virgil.” 
“No,” he said, slowly. “I can’t see how he could 
do anything. It was justa secret, not a patent; the 
thing ain’t patentable. I’ve tried to think what he 
could do—supposing he was to want to—but I can’t 
figure out anything at all that would be any harm to 
me. There isn’t any way in the world it could be 
made a question of law. Only thing he could do’d 
be to tell people his side of it, and set ’em against me. 
I been kind of waiting for that to happen, all along.” 
She looked somewhat relieved. “So did I expect 
it,’ she said.. “I was dreading it most on Alice’s 
account: it might have—well, young men are so 
easily influenced and all. . But so far as the business 
is concerned, what.if Mr. Lamb did talk? That 
wouldn’t amount to much. It wouldn’t affect the | 


296 ALICE ADAMS 


business; not to hurt. And, besides, he isn’t even 
doing that.” 

*“No; anyhow not yet, it seems.”” And Adams 
sighed again, wistfully. “But I would give a good 
deal to know what he thinks!” 

Before his surrender he had always supposed that 
if he did such an unthinkable thing as to seize upon 
the glue process for himself, what he would feel must 
be an overpowering shame. But shame is the rarest 
thing in the world: what he felt was this unremittent 
curiosity about his old employer’s thoughts. It was 
an obsession, yet he did not want to hear what Lamb 
“thought” from Lamb himself, for Adams had a 
second obsession, and this was his dread of meeting 
the old man face to face. Such an encounter could 
happen only by chance and unexpectedly; since 
Adams would have avoided any deliberate meeting, 
so long as his legs had strength to carry him, even if 
Lamb came to the house to see him. But people 
do meet unexpectedly; and when Adams had to be 
down-town he kept away from the “wholesale dis- 
trict.”” One day he did see Lamb, as the latter went 
by in his car, impassive, going home to lunch; and 
Adams, in the crowd at a corner, knew that the old 
man had not seen him. Nevertheless, in a street 


ALICE ADAMS 297 


car, on the way back to his sheds, an hour later, he 
was still subject to little shivering seizures of horror. 

He worked unceasingly, seeming to keep at it even 
in his sleep, for he always woke in the midst of a 
planning and estimating that must have been going 
on in his mind before consciousness of himself re- 
turned. Moreover, the work, thus urged, went 
rapidly, in spite of the high wages he had to pay his 
labourers for their short hours. “It eats money,” 
he complained, and, in fact, by the time his vats and 
boilers were in place it had eaten almost all he could 
supply; but in addition to his equipment he now 
owned a stock of “‘raw material,’ raw indeed; and 
when operations should be a little further along he 
was confident his banker would be willing to “carry” 
him. 

Six weeks from the day he had obtained his lease 
he began his glue-making. The terrible smells came 
out of the sheds and went writhing like snakes all 
through that quarter of the town. A smiling man, 
strolling and breathing the air with satisfaction, 
would turn a corner and smile no more, but hurry. 
However, coloured people had almost all the dwell- 
ings of this old section. to themselves; and although 
even they were troubled, there-was recompense for 


298 ALICE ADAMS 


them. Being philosophic about what appeared to 
them as in the order of nature, they sought neither 
escape nor redress, and soon learned to bear what the 
wind brought them. They even made use of it to 
enrich those figures of speech with which the native 
impulses of coloured people decorate their com- 
munications: they flavoured metaphor, simile, and 
invective with it; and thus may be said to have en- 
joyed it. But the man who produced it took a hot 
bath as soon as he reached his home the evening of 
that first day when his manufacturing began. Then 
he put on fresh clothes; but after dinner he seemed to 
be haunted, and asked his wife if she “‘noticed any- 
thing.” ; 

She laughed and inquired what he meant. 

“Seems to me as if that glue-works smell hadn’t 
quit hanging to me,” he explained. ‘Don’t you 
notice it?”’ 

“No! What an idea!” 

He laughed, too, but uneasily; and told her he was 
sure “the dang glue smell”’ was somehow sticking to 
him. Later, he went outdoors and walked up and 
down the small yard in the dusk; but now and then 
he stood still, with his head lifted, and sniffed the air 
suspiciously. “Can you smell it?” he called.to Alice, 


ALICE ADAMS 299 


who sat upon the veranda, prettily dressed and wait- 
ing in a reverie. 

“Smell what, papa?” 

“That dang glue-works.” 

She did the same thing her mother had done: 
laughed, and said, ““No! How foolish! Why, papa, 
it’s over two miles from here!”’ 

“You don’t get it at all?”’ he insisted. 

“The idea! The air is lovely to-night, papa.” 

The air did not seem lovely to him, for he was 
positive that he detected the taint. He wondered 
how far it carried, and if J. A. Lamb would smell 
it, too, out on his own lawn a mile to the north; and 
if he did, would he guess what it was? Then Adams 
laughed at himself for such nonsense; but could not 
rid his nostrils of their disgust. ‘To him the whole 
town seemed to smell of his glue-works. 

Nevertheless, the glue was making, and his sheds 
were busy. “Guess we're stirrin’ up this ole neigh- 
bourhood with more than the smell,”’ his foreman re- 
marked one morning. 

“How's that?” Adams inquired. 

“That great big, enormous ole dead butterine 
factory across the street from our lot,” the man said. 

‘Nothin’ like settin’ an example to bring real estate 


300 ALICE ADAMS 


to life. That place is full o’ carpenters startin’ in to 
make a regular buildin’ of it again. Guess you 
ought to have the credit of it, because you was the 
first man in ten years to see any possibilities in this 
neighbourhood.” : 

Adams was pleased, and, going out to see for him- 
self, heard a great hammering and sawing from within 
the building; while carpenters were just emerging 
gingerly upon the dangerous roof. He walked out 
over the dried mud of his deep lot, crossed the street, 
and spoke genially to a workman who was removing 
the broken glass of a window on the ground floor. 

*‘Here! What’s all this howdy-do over here?” 

*““Goin’ to fix her all up, I guess,” the workman 
said. “Big job it is, too.” 

Sh’ think it would be.” 

“Yes, sir; a pretty big job—a pretty big job. Got 
men at it on all four floors and on the roof. They’re 
doin’ it right.” 

*Who’s doing it?” 

“Lord! Id’ know. Some o’ these here big manu- 
facturing corporations, I guess.” 

*“What’s it going to be?” 

“They tell me,” the workman answered—“they 
tell me she’s goin’ to be a butterine factory again. 


ALICE ADAMS 301 


Anyways, I hope she won’t be anything to smell like 
that glue-works you got over there—not while I’m 
workin’ around her, anyways!” 

“That smell’s all right,” Adams said. ‘You soon 
get used to it.” | 

“You do?” The man appeared incredulous. 
‘Listen! I was over in France: it’s a good thing them 
Dutchmen never thought of it; we’d of had to quit!” 

Adams laughed, and went back to his sheds. ‘“‘I 
guess my foreman was right,” he told his wife, that 
evening, with a little satisfaction. ‘“‘As soon as one 
man shows enterprise enough to found an industry in 
a broken-down neighbourhood, somebody else is sure 
to follow. I kind of like the look of it: it'll help make 
our place seem sort of more busy and prosperous 
when it comes to getting a loan from the bank—and 
I got to get one mighty soon, too. I did think some 
that if things go as well as there’s every reason to 
think they ought to, I might want to spread out and 
maybe get hold of that old factory myself; but I 
hardly expected to be able to handle a proposition of 
that size before two or three years from now, and 
anyhow there’s room enough on the lot I got, if we 
need more buildings some day. Things are going 
about as fine as I could ask: I hired some girls to-day 


302 ALICE ADAMS 


to do the bottling—coloured girls along about sixteen 
to twenty years old. Afterwhile, I expect to get a 
machine to put the stuff in the little bottles, when we 
begin to get good returns; but half a dozen of these 
coloured girls can do it all right now, by hand. 
We're getting to have really quite a little plant over 
there: yes, sir, quite a regular little plant!” 

He chuckled, and at this cheerful sound, of a kind 
his wife had almost forgotten he was capable of 
producing, she ventured to put her hand upon his 
arm. They had gone outdoors, after dinner, taking 
two chairs with them, and were sitting through the 
late twilight together, keeping well away from the 
‘front porch,’ which was not yet occupied, however, 
Alice was in her room changing her dress. 

“Well, honey,’ Mrs. Adams said, taking confidence 
not only to put her hand upon his arm, but to revive 
this disused endearment;—*“‘it’s grand to have you so 
optimistic. Maybe some time you'll admit I was 
right, after all. Everyihing’s going so well, it seems 
a pity you didn’t take this—this step—long ago. 
Don’t you think maybe so, Virgil?” 

*Well—if I was ever going to, I don’t know but I 
might as well of. I got to admit the proposition 
begins to look pretty good: I know the stuff’ll sell, 


ALICE ADAMS 303 


and I can’t see a thing in the world to stop it. It does 


93 





look good, and if—if He paused. 

“Tf what?” she said, suddenly anxious. 

He laughed plaintively, as if confessing a supersti- 
tion. “It’s funny—well, it’s mighty funny about 
that smell. I’ve got so used to it at the plant I never 
seem to notice it at all over there. It’s only when I 
get away. Honestly, can’t you notice——?”’ 

**Virgil!’”? She lifted her hand to strike his arm 
chidingly. “Do quit harping on that nonsense!”’ 

“Oh, of course it don’t amount to anything,” he 
said. “A person can stand a good deal of just smell. 
It don’t worry me any.” 

*“T should think not—especially as there isn’t any.” 

** Well,’ he said, “I feel pretty fair over the whole 
thing—a lot better’n I ever expected to, anyhow. I 
don’t know as there’s any reason I shouldn’t tell you 
so.” 

She was deeply pleased with this acknowledgment, 
and her voice had tenderness in it as she responded: 
“There, honey! Didn’t I always say you’d be glad 
if you did it?” 

Embarrassed, he coughed loudly, then filled his 
pipe and lit it. “Well,” he said, slowly, “it’s a 
puzzle. Yes, sir, it’s a puzzle.” 


304 ALICE ADAMS 


“What is?” 

“Pretty much everything, I guess.” 

As he spoke, a song came to them from a lighted 
window over their heads. Then the window dark- 
ened abruptly, but the song continued as Alice went 
down through the house to wait on the little veranda. 
“Mi chiamo Mimi,” she sang, and in her voice 
throbbed something almost startling in its sweetness. 
Her father and mother listened, not speaking until 
the song stopped with the click of the wire screen at 
the front door as Alice came out. 

“My!” said her father. “‘How sweet she does 
sing! I don’t know as I ever heard her voice sound 
nicer than it did just then.” 

“'There’s something that makes it sound that 
way,” his wife told him. 

**I suppose so,” he said, sighing. “I suppose so. 
You think——”’ 

**She’s just terribly in love with him!” 

**T expect that’s the way it ought to be,” he said, 
then drew upon his pipe for reflection, and became 
murmurous with the symptoms of melancholy 
laughter. “It don’t make things less of a puzzle, 
though, does it?” 

“In what way, Virgil?” 


ALICE ADAMS 305 


“Why, here,” he said—“here we go through all 
this muck and moil to help fix things nicer for her at 
home, and what’s it all amount to? Seems like she’s 
just gone ahead the way she’d ’a’ gone anyhow; and 
now, 1 suppose, getting ready to up and leave us! 
Ain’t that a puzzle to you? It is to me.” 

“Oh, but things haven’t gone that far yet.” 


33 





“Why, you just said 
She gave a little cry of protest. “Oh, they aren’t 
engaged yet. Of course they will be; he’s just as 


> 





much interested in her as she is in him, but : 

‘“Well, what’s the trouble then?”’ 

“You are a simple old fellow!” his wife exclaimed, 
and then rose from her chair. ‘“‘That reminds me,” 
she said. 

“What of?” he asked. “What’s my being simple 
remind you of?” 

“Nothing!” she laughed. “It wasn’t you that 
reminded me. It was just something that’s been on 
my mind. I don’t believe he’s actually ever been 
inside our house!” 

*““Hasn’t he?” 

“I actually don’t believe he ever has,” she 
said. “Of course we must ”” She paused, de- 





bating. 


306 ALICE ADAMS 


“We must what?” 

“I guess I better talk to Alice about it right now,” 
she said. “‘He don’t usually come for about half an 
hour yet; I guess I’ve got time.” And with that she 
walked away, leaving him to his puzzles. 


CHAPTER XIX 


LICE was softly crooning to herself as her 
A mother turned the corner of the house and 
approached through the dusk. 

“Tsn’t it the most beautiful evening!” the daugh- 
ter said. “Why can’t summer last all year? Did 
you ever know a lovelier twilight than this, 
mama?” , 

Mrs. Adams laughed, and answered, “‘Not since I 
was your age, I expect.” 

Alice was wistful at once. ‘Don’t they stay beauti- 
ful after my age?”’ 

**Well, it’s not the same thing.” 

“Isn’t it? Not—ever?” 

“You may have a different kind from mine,”’ the 
mother said, a little sadly. “I think you will, Alice. 
You deserve——”’ 

“No, I don’t. I don’t deserve anything, and I 
know it. But I’m getting a great deal these days— 
more than I ever dreamed could come to me. [’m— 


I’m pretty happy, mama!” 
307 


308 | ALICE ADAMS 


“Dearie!” Her mother would have kissed her, 
but Alice drew away. 

“Oh, I don’t mean ” She laughed nervously. 
“IT wasn’t meaning to tell you I’m engaged, mama. 
We’re not. Imean—oh! things seem pretty beauti- 
ful in spite of all I’ve done to spoil ’em.” 

“You?” Mrs. Adams cried, incredulously. ‘“What 
have you done to spoil anything?” 

“Little things,” Alice said. ‘“‘A thousand little 
silly—oh, what’s the use? He’s so honestly what he is 
' —just simple and good and intelligent—I feel a tricky 
mess beside him! I don’t see why he likes me; and 





sometimes I’m afraid he wouldn’t if he knew me.” 
““He’d just worship you,” said the fond mother. 
“And the more he knew you, the more he’d worship 
you.” 
Alice shook her head. “He’s not the worshiping 
‘kind. Not like that at all. He’s more a 
But Mrs. Adams was not interested in this analy- 


sis, and she interrupted briskly, “Of course it’s time 





your father and I showed some interest in him. I 
was just saying I actually don’t believe he’s ever been 
inside the house.” 

“No,” Alice said, musingly; “that’s true: I don’t 
believe he has. Except when we’ve walked in the 


ALICE ADAMS 309 


evening we've always sat out here, even those two 
times when it was drizzly. It’s so much nicer.” 

“We'll have to do something or other, of course,” 
her mother said. 

‘What like?” 

IT was thinking—”’ Mrs. Adams paused. “‘ Well, 
of course we could hardly put off asking him to din- 
ner, or something, much longer.”’ 

Alice was not enthusiastic; so far from it, indeed, 
that there was a melancholy alarm in her voice. 
“Oh, mama, must we? Do you think so?” 

“Yes, Ido. I really do.” 

*Couldn’t we—well, couldn’t we wait?” 

“Tt looks queer,” Mrs. Adams said. “It isn’t the 
thing at all for a young man to come as much as he 
does, and never more than just barely meet your 
father and mother. No. We ought to do some- 
thing.” 

“But a dinner!” Alice objected. “In the first 
place, there isn’t anybody I want to ask. There isn’t 
anybody I would ask.” 

“I didn’t mean trying to give a big dinner,”’ her 
mother explained. “I just mean having him to din- 
ner. That mulatto woman, Malena Burns, goes out 
by the day, and she could bring a waitress. We can 


310 ALICE ADAMS 


get some flowers for the table and some to put in the 
living-room. We might just as well go ahead and do 
it to-morrow as any other time; because your father’s. 
in a fine mood, and I saw Malena this afternoon and 
told her I might want her soon. She said she didn’t 
have any engagements this week, and I can let her 
know to-night. Suppose when he comes you ask. 
him for to-morrow, Alice. Hverything’ll be very 
nice, I’m sure. Don’t worry about it.” 





**Well—but ” Alice was uncertain. 

“But don’t you see, it looks so queer, not to do 
something ?”’ her mother urged. “It looks so kind. 
of poverty-stricken. We really oughtn’t to wait any 
longer.” 

Alice assented, though not with a good heart. 
“Very well, Pll ask him, if you think we’ve got to.” 

“That matter’s settled then,’’? Mrs. Adams said. 
“Tl go telephone Malena, and then I'll tell your 
father about it.” 

But when she went back to her husband, she found 
him in an excited state of mind, and Walter standing 
before him in the darkness. Adams was almost 
shouting, so great was his vehemence. 

**Hush, hush!” his wife implored, as she came near 
them. “They’ll hear you out on the front porch!” 


ALICE ADAMS 311 


*“*T don’t care who hears me,’’ Adams said, harshly, 
though he tempered his loudness. “Do you want to 
know what this boy’s asking me for? I thought he’d 
maybe come to tell me he’d got a little sense in his 
head at last, and a little decency about what’s due his 
family! I thought he was going to ask me to take 
him into my plant. No, ma’am; that’s not what he 
wants!” 

*“No, it isn’t,’ Walter said. In the darkness his 
face could not be seen; he stood motionless, in what 
seemed an apathetic attitude; and he spoke quietly, 
“No,” he repeated. ‘‘That isn’t what I want.” 

“You stay down at that place,’’ Adams went on, 
hotly, “instead of trying to be a little use to your 
family; and the only reason you're allowed to stay 
there is because Mr. Lamb’s never happened to 





notice you ave still there! You just wait “ 
“You're off,’ Walter said, in the same quiet way. 
*“He knows I’m there. He spoke to me yesterday: he 
asked me how I was getting along with my work.” 
‘He did?” Adams said, seeming not to believe him. 
“Yes. He did.” 
*“What else did he say, Walter?” Mrs. Adams 
asked quickly. 
“Nothin’. Just walked on.” 


312 ALICE ADAMS 


**T don’t believe he knew who you were,” Adams 
declared. 

“Think not? He called me ‘Walter Adams.’”’ 

At this Adams was silent; and Walter, after wait- 
ing a moment, said: 

“Well, are you going to do anything about me? 
About what I told you I got to have?” 

*“What is it, Walter?’’ his mother asked, since 
Adams did not speak. 

Walter cleared his throat, and replied in a tone as 
quiet as that he had used before, though with a 
slight huskiness, ‘“‘I got to have three hundred and 
fifty dollars. You better get him to give it to me if 
you can.” 

Adams found his voice. ‘“‘ Yes,” he said, bitterly, 
“'That’s all he'asks! He won’t do anything I ask 
him to, and in return he asks me for three hundred 
and fifty dollars! That’s all!” 

“What in the world!” Mrs. Adams exclaimed. 
‘What for, Walter?” | 

“*T got to have it,” Walter said. 

“But what for?” 

His quiet huskiness did not alter. “I got to have 
it;? 

“But can’t you tell us—— 


32 





ALICE ADAMS 313 


“TI got to have it.” 

“That’s all you can get out of him,” Adams said. 
**He seems to think it’ll bring him in three hundred 
and fifty dollars!” 

A faint tremulousness became evident in the 
husky voice. ‘“‘Haven’t you got it?” 

“No, I haven’t got it!’ his father answered. 
“And I’ve got to go to a bank for more than my 
pay-roll next week. Do you think ’m a mint?” 

“TI don’t understand what you mean, Walter,” 
Mrs. Adams interposed, perplexed and distressed. 
“If your father had the money, of course he’d need 
every cent of it, especially just now, and, anyhow, 
you could scarcely expect him to give it to you, un- 
less you told us what you want with it. But he 
hasn’t got it.” 

“All right,” Walter said; and after standing a 
moment more, in silence, he added, impersonally, 
“T don’t see as you ever did anything much for me, 
anyhow—either of you.” 

Then, as if this were his valedictory, he turned his 
back upon them, walked away quickly, and was at 
once lost to their sight in the darkness. 

“There’s a fine boy to’ve had the trouble of 
raising!”” Adams grumbled. “‘Just crazy, that’s all.” 


514 ALICE ADAMS 


“What in the world do you suppose he wants all 
that money for?” his wife said, wonderingly. “I 
can’t imagine what he could do with it. I wonder 


93 





She paused. “I wonder if he——” 

“Tf he what?”’ Adams prompted her irritably. 

“Tf he could have bad—associates.” 

“God knows!” said Adams. “J don’t! It just 
looks to mé like he had something in him I don’t 
understand. You can’t keep your eye ona boy all 
the time in a city this size, not a boy Walter’s age. 
You got a girl pretty much in the house, but a boy’ll 
follow his nature. J don’t know what to do with 
him!” 

Mrs. Adams brightened a little. “He'll come out 
all right,’ she said. “I’m sure he will. I’m sure 
he’d never be anything really bad: and he'll come 
around all right about the glue-works, too; you'll see. 
Of course every young man wants money—it doesn’t 
prove he’s doing anything wrong just because he asks 
you for it.” 

“No. All it proves to me is that he hasn’t got 
good sense—asking me for three hundred and fifty 
dollars, when he knows as well as you do the position 
I'm in! If I wanted to, I couldn’t hardly let him 
have three hundred and fifty cents, let alone dollars!” 


ALICE ADAMS 315 


“I’m afraid you'll have to let me have that much— 
and maybe a little more,”’ she ventured, timidly; and 
she told him of her plans for the morrow. He ob- 
jected vehemently. 

“Oh, but Alice has probably asked him by this 
time,” Mrs. Adams said. “It really must be done, 
Virgil: you don’t want him to think she’s ashamed of 
us, do you?” 

“Well, go ahead, but just let me stay away,” he 
begged. “Of course I expect to undergo a kind of 
talk with him, when he gets ready to say something 
to us about Alice, but I do hate to have to sit through 
a fashionable dinner.” 

“Why, it isn’t going to bother you,” she said; 
“just one young man as a guest.” 

“Yes, I know; but you want to have all this fancy 
cookin’; and I see well enough you're going to get 
that old dress suit out of the cedar chest in the attic, 
and try to make me put it on me.” 

“I do think you better, Virgil.” 

“*T hope the moths have got in it,” he said. “Last 
time I wore it was to the banquet, and it was pretty 
old then. Of course I didn’t mind wearing it to the 
banquet so much, because that was what you might 
call quite an occasion.” He spoke with some 


316 ALICE ADAMS | 


reminiscent complacency; “the banquet,” an affair 
now five years past, having provided the one time in 
his life when he had been so distinguished among 
his fellow-citizens as to receive an invitation to be 
present, with some seven hundred others, at the 
annual eating and speech-making of the city’s Cham- 
ber of Commerce. ‘‘ Anyhow, as you say, I think it 
would look foolish of me to wear a dress suit for just 
one young man,” he went on protesting, feebly. 
*What’s the use of all so much howdy-do, anyway? 
You don’t expect him to believe we put. on all that 
style every night, do you? Is that what you’re 
after?” : 

“Well, we want him to think we live nicely,” she 
admitted. | 

“So that’s it!” he said, querulously. ‘You want 
him to think that’s our regular gait, do you? Well, 
he’ll know better about me, no matter how you fix me 
up, because he saw me in my regular suit the evening 
she introduced me to him, and he could tell anyway 
I’m not one of these moving-picture sporting-men 
that’s always got a dress suit on. Besides, you and 
Alice certainly have some idea he’ll come again, 
haven’t you? If they get things settled between ’em 
he’ll be around the house and to meals most any 


ALICE ADAMS 317 


time, won’t he? You don’t hardly expect to put on 
style all the time, I guess. Well, he’ll see then that 
this kind of thing was all show-off and bluff, won’t 
he? What about it?” 

“Oh, well, by that time ” She left the sentence 
unfinished, as if absently. “‘ You could let us have a 





little money for to-morrow, couldn’t you, honey?”’ 

“Oh, I reckon, I reckon,’? he mumbled. “A girl 
like Alice is some comfort: she don’t come around 
acting as if she’d commit suicide if she didn’t get 
three hundred and fifty dollars in the next five 
minutes. JI expect I can spare five or six dollars for 
your show-off if I got to.” 

However, she finally obtained fifteen before. his 
bedtime; and the next morning “went to market” 
after breakfast, leaving Alice to make the beds. 
Walter had not yet come downstairs. “You had 
better call him,”’ Mrs. Adams said, as she departed 
with a big basket on her arm. “I expect he’s pretty 
sleepy; he was out so late last night I didn’t hear 
him come in, though I kept awake till after midnight, 
listening for him. Tell him he'll be late to work if he 
doesn’t hurry; and see that he drinks his coffee, even 
if he hasn’t time for anything else. And when 
Malena comes, get her started in the kitchen: show 


318 ALICE ADAMS 


her where everything is.” She waved her hand, as 
she set out for a corner where the cars stopped. 
“Everything’ll be lovely. Don’t forget about Wal- 
ter.” 

Nevertheless, Alice forgot about Walter for a few 
minutes. She closed the door, went into the “living- 
room” absently, and stared vaguely at one of the 
old brown-plush rocking-chairs there. Upon her 
forehead were the little shadows of-an apprehensive 
reverie, and her thoughts overlapped one another in 
a fretful jumble. ‘‘ What will he think? These old 
chairs—they’re hideous. Ill scrub those soot- 
streaks on the columns: it won’t do any good, though. 
That long crack in the column—nothing can help it. 
What will he think of papa? I hope mama won’t talk 
too much. When he thinks of Mildred’s house, or of 
Henrietta’s, or any of ’em, beside this She said 
she’d buy plenty of roses; that ought to help some. 
Nothing could be done about these horrible chairs: 
can’t take ’em up in the attic—a room’s got to have 
chairs! Might have rented some. No; if he ever 





comes again he’d see they weren’t here. ‘If he ever 
comes again’—oh, it won’t be that bad! But it won’t 
be what he expects. I’m responsible for what he ex- 
pects: he expects just what the airs I’ve put on have 


ALICE ADAMS 319 


made him expect. What did I want to pose so to 
him for—as if papa were a wealthy man and all that? 
What will he think? The photograph of the Colos- 
seum’s a rather good thing, though. It helps some— 
as if we’d bought it in Rome perhaps. I hope he'll 
think so; he believes I’ve been abroad, of course. 
The other night he said, ‘You remember the feeling 
you get in the Sainte-Chapelle’-—There’s another lie 
of mine, not saying I didn’t remember because I’d 
never been there. What makes me do it? Papa 
must wear his evening clothes. But Walter——”’ 

With that she recalled her mother’s admonition, 
and went upstairs to Walter’s door. She tapped 
upon it with her fingers. 

“Time to get up, Walter. The rest of us had 
breakfast over half an hour ago, and it’s nearly eight 
o'clock. You’ll be late. Hurry down and I'll have 
some coffee and toast ready for you.” There came 
no sound from within the room, so she rapped louder. 

“Wake up, Walter!” 

She called and rapped again, without getting any 
response, and then, finding that the door yielded to 
her, opened it and went in. Walter was not there. 

He had been there, however; had slept upon the 
bed, though not inside the covers; and Alice supposed 


320 ALICE ADAMS 


he must have come home so late that he had been too 
sleepy to take off his clothes. Near the foot of the 
bed was a shallow closet where he kept his ‘“‘other 
suit” and his evening clothes; and the door stood 
open, showing a bare wall. Nothing whatever was 
in the closet, and Alice was rather surprised at this 
fora moment. ‘That’s queer,” she murmured; and 
then she decided that when he woke he found the 
_ clothes he had slept in “‘so mussy” he had put on his 
“‘other suit,’ and had gone out before breakfast with 
the mussed clothes to have them pressed, taking his 
evening things with them. Satisfied with this 
explanation, and failing to observe that it did not 
account for the absence of shoes from the closet floor, 
she nodded absently, “Yes, that must be it’’; and. 
when her mother returned, told her that Walter had 
probably breakfasted down-town. They did not 
delay over this; the coloured woman had arrived, and 
the basket’s disclosures were important. 

“TI stopped at Worlig’s on the way back,” said 
Mrs. Adams, flushed with hurry and excitement. “I 
bought a can of caviar there. I thought we’d have 
little sandwiches brought into the ‘living-room’ be- 
fore dinner, the way you said they did when you went 
to that dinner at the——-” 


ALICE ADAMS 321 
**But I think that was to go with cocktails, mama, 


> 





and of course we haven’t 4 

“No,”? Mrs. Adams said. ‘‘Still, I think it would 
be nice. We can make them look very dainty, on a 
tray, and the waitress can bring themin. I thought 
we'd have the soup already on the table; and we car 
walk right out as soon as we have the sandwiches, so 
it won’t get cold. Then, after the soup, Malena says 
she can make sweetbread patés with mushrooms: and 
for the meat course we'll have larded fillet. Malena’s 
really a fancy cook, you know, and she says she can 
do anything like that to perfection. We'll have peas 
with the fillet, and potato balls and Brussels sprouts. 
Brussels sprouts are fashionable now, they told me at 
market. Then will come the chicken salad, and after 
that the ice-cream—she’s going to make an angel-food 
cake to go with it—and then coffee and crackers and 
a new kind of cheese I got at Worlig’s, he says is very 
fine.” 

Alice was alarmed. ‘Don’t you think perhaps it’s 
too much, mama?”’ 

“It’s better to have too much than too little,” 
her mother said, cheerfully. ‘We don’t want him to 
think we’re the kind that skimp. Lord knows we 
have to enough, though, most of the time! Get the 


322 ALICE ADAMS 


flowers in water, child. I bought ’em at market be- 
cause they’re so much cheaper there, but they’ll keep 
fresh and nice. You fix ’em any way you want. 
Hurry! It’s got to be a busy day.” 

She had bought three dozen little roses. Alice took 
them and began to arrange them in vases, keeping 
the stems separated as far as possible so that the 
clumps would look larger. She put half a dozen in 
each of three vases in the “living-room,” placing one 
vase on the table in the center of the room, and one 
at each end of the mantelpiece. Then she took the 
rest of the roses to the dining-room; but she post- 
poned the arrangement of them until the table should 
be set, just before dinner. She was thoughtful; 
planning to dry the stems and lay them on the table- 
cloth like a vine of roses running in a delicate design, 
if she found that the dozen and a half she had left were 
enough for that. If they weren’t she would arrange 
them in 2, vase. 

She looked a long time at the little roses in the 
basin of water, where she had put them; then she 
sighed, and went away to heavier tasks, while her 
mother worked in the kitchen with Malena. Alice 
dusted the “living-room” and the dining-room 
vigorously, though all the time with a look that grew 


ALICE ADAMS 323 


more and more pensive; and having dusted every- 
thing, she wiped the furniture; rubbed it hard. 
After that, she washed the floors and the woodwork. 

Emerging from the kitchen at noon, Mrs. Adams 
found her daughter on hands and knees, scrubbing the 
bases of the columns between the hall and the 
“living-room.” 

““Now, dearie,”’ she said, ““you mustn’t tire your- 
self out, and you’d better come and eat something. 
Your father said he’d get a bite down-town to-day— 
he was going down to the bank—and Walter eats 
down-town all the time lately, so I thought we 
wouldn’t bother to set the table for lunch. Come on 
and we'll have something in the kitchen.” 

“No,” Alice said, dully, as she went on with he 
work. “I don’t want anything.” : 

Her mother came closer to her. “Why, what’s 
the matter?” she asked, briskly. ‘‘ You seem kind 
of pale, to me; and you don’t look—you don’t look 
happy.” 

“Well 
no more. 

“See here!” Mrs. Adams exclaimed. “This is all 


just for you! You ought to be enjoying it. Why, 





*” Alice began, uncertainly, but said 


it’s the first time we’ve—we’ve entertained in I 


324 ALICE ADAMS 


don’t know how long! I guess it’s almost since we 
had that little party when you were eighteen. What’s 
the matter with you?” 

‘Nothing. ‘I don’t know.” 

“But, dearie, aren’t you looking forward to this 
evening?” | 

The girl looked up, showing a pallid and solemn 
face. “Oh, yes, of course,” she said, and tried to 
smile. ‘Of course we had to do it—I do think it’ll 
be nice. Of course I’m looking forward to it.” 


CHAPTER XX 


HE was indeed “looking forward” to that 
evening, but in a cloud of apprehension; and, 
although she could never have guessed it, 

this was the simultaneous condition of another 
“person —none other than the guest for whose pleasure 
so much cooking and scrubbing seemed to be neces- 
sary. Moreover, Mr. Arthur Russell’s premonitions 
were no product of mere coincidence; neither had any 
magical sympathy produced them. His state of 
mind was rather the result of rougher undercurrents 
which had all the time been running beneath the 
surface of a romantic friendship. 

Never shrewder than when she analyzed the 
gentlemen, Alice did not libel him when she said he 
was one of those quiet men who are a bit flirtatious, 
by which she meant that he was a bit “suscept- 
ible,” the same thing—and he had proved him- 
self susceptible to Alice upon his first sight of her. 
“There!” he said to himself. “Who’s that?” 


And in the crowd of girls at his cousin’s dance, 
825 


326 ALICE ADAMS 


all strangers to him, she was the one he wanted to 
know. 

Since then, his summer evenings with her had been 
as secluded as if, for three hours after the falling of 
dusk, they two had drawn apart from the world to 
some dear bower of their own. The little veranda 
was that glamorous nook, with a faint golden light 
falling through the glass of the closed door upon 
Alice, and darkness elsewhere, except for the one 
round globe of the street lamp at the corner. The 
people who passed along the sidewalk, now and then, 
were only shadows with voices, moving vaguely 
under the maple trees that loomed in obscure con- 
tours against the stars. So, as the two sat together, 
the back of the world was the wall and closed door 
behind them; and Russell, when he was away from 
Alice, always thought of her as sitting there before 
the closed door. A glamour was about her thus, and a 
spell upon him; but he had a formless anxiety never 
put into words: all the pictures of her in his mind 
stopped at the closed door. 

He had another anxiety; and, for the greater part, 
this was of her own creating. She had too often 
asked him (no matter how gaily) what he heard about 
her; too often begged him not to hear anything. 


ALICE ADAMS 327 


Then, hoping to forestall whatever he might hear, 
she had been at too great pains to account for it, 
to discredit and mock it; and, though he laughed 
at her for this, telling her truthfully he did not 
even hear her mentioned, the everlasting irony 
that deals with all such human forefendings pre- 
vailed. 

Lately, he had half confessed to her what a ner- 
vousness she had produced. “You sake me dread 
the day when I'll hear somebody speaking of you. 
You’re getting me so upset about it that if I ever hear 
anybody so much.as say the name ‘Alice Adams,’ [ll 


?? 


run The confession was but half of one because 
he laughed; and she took it for an assurance of 
loyalty in the form of burlesque. She misunder- 
stood: he laughed, but his nervousness was gen- 
uine. ‘ 

After any stroke of events, whether a happy one or 
a catastrophe, we see that the materials for it were a 
long time gathering, and the only marvel is that the 
stroke was not prophesied. What bore the air of 
fatal coincidence may remain fatal indeed, to this 
later view; but, with the haphazard aspect dispelled, 
there is left for scrutiny the same ancient hint from 
the Infinite to the effect that since events have never 


328 ALICE ADAMS 


yet failed to be law-abiding, perhaps it were well for 
us to deduce that they will continue to be so until 
further notice. 

On the day that was to open the closed 
door in the background of his pictures of Alice, 
Russell lunched with his relatives. There were but 
the four people, Russell and Mildred and her mother 
and father, in the great, cool dining-room. Arched 
French windows, shaded by awnings, admitted a 
mellow light and looked out upon a green lawn end- 
ing in a long conservatory, which revealed through 
its glass panes a carnival of plants in luxuriant blos- 
som. From his seat at the table, Russell glanced 
out at this pretty display, and informed his cousins 
that he was surprised. “‘You have such a glorious 
spread of flowers all over the house,” he said, “I 
didn’t suppose you’d have any left out yonder. In 
fact, I didn’t know there were so many splendid 
flowers in the world.”’ 

Mrs. Palmer, large, calm, fair, like her daughter, 
responded with a mild reproach: ‘“'That’s because 
you haven’t been cousinly enough to get used to 
them, Arthur. You’ve almost taught us to forget 
what you look like.” 

In defense Russell waved a hand toward her hus- 


ALICE ADAMS 329 
band. ‘‘You see, he’s begun to keep me so hard at 


> 





work ‘ 

But Mr. Palmer declined the responsibility. “Up 
to four or five in the afternoon, perhaps,” he said. 
“After that, the young gentleman is as much a 
stranger to me as he is to my family. [ve been 
wondering who she could be.” 

‘“When a man’s preoccupied there must be a lady 
then?” Russell inquired. 

“That seems to be the view of your sex,” Mrs. 
Palmer suggested. “It was my husband who said it, 
not Mildred or I.” 

Mildred smiled faintly. “‘Papa may be singular 
in his ideas; they may come entirely from his own 
experience, and have nothing to do with Arthur.” 

“Thank you, Mildred,” her cousin said, bowing 
to her gratefully. “You seem lo understand my 
character—and your father’s quite as well!” 

However, Mildred remained grave in the face of 
this customary pleasantry, not because the old jest, 
worn round, like what preceded it, rolled in an old 
groove, but because of some preoccupation of her 
own. Her faint smile had disappeared, and, as her 
cousin’s glance met hers, she looked down; yet not 
before he had seen in her eyes the flicker of some-— 


330 ALICE ADAMS 


thing like a question—a question both poignant and 
dismayed. He may have understood it; for his own 
smile vanished at once in favour of a reciprocal 
solemnity. 

“You see, Arthur,’’ Mrs. Palmer said, “‘ Mildred is 
always a good cousin. She and I stand by you, even 
if you do stay away from us for weeks and weeks.” 
Then, observing that he appeared to be so occupied 
with a bunch of iced grapes upon his plate that he 
had not heard her, she began to talk to her husband, 
asking him what was “‘going on down-town.” 

Arthur continued to eat his grapes, but he ventured 
to look again at Mildred after a few moments. She, 
also, appeared to be occupied with a bunch of grapes 
though she ate none, and only pulled them from their 
stems. She sat straight, her features as composed 
and pure as those of anew marble saint in a cathedral 
niche; yet her downcast eyes seemed to conceal 
many thoughts; and her cousin, against his will, was 
more aware of what these thoughts might be than 
of the leisurely conversation between her father and 
mother. All at once, however, he heard something 
that startled him, and he listened—and here was the 
effect of all Alice’s forefendings; he listened from the 
first with a sinking heart. 


ALICE ADAMS 331 


Mr. Palmer, mildly amused by what he was telling 
his wife, had just spoken the words, “this Virgil 
Adams.” What he had said was, “this Virgil Adams 
—that’s the man’s name. Queer case.” 

“Who told you?” Mrs. Palmer inquired, not much 
interested. : 

** Alfred Lamb,” her husband answered. “‘He was 
laughing about his father, at the club. You see the 
old gentleman takes a great pride in his judgment of 
men, and always boasted to his sons that he’d never 
in his life made a mistake in trusting the wrong man. 
Now Alfred and James Albert, Junior, think they 
have a great joke on him; and they’ve twitted him so 
much about it he’ll scarcely speak to them. From 
the first, Alfred says, the old chap’s only repartee 
was, ‘You wait and you'll see!’ And they’ve asked 
him so often to show them what they’re going to see 
that he won’t say anything at all!” 

“‘He’s a funny old fellow,” Mrs. Palmer observed. 
“But he’s so shrewd I can’t imagine his being de- 
ceived for such a long time. Twenty years, you said?”’ 

“Yes, longer than that, I understand. It appears 
when this man—this Adams—was a young clerk, the 
old gentleman trusted him with one of his business 
secrets, a glue process that Mr. Lamb had spent some 


332 ALICE ADAMS 


money to get hold of. The old chap thought this 
Adams was going to have quite a future with the 
Lamb concern, and of course never dreamed he was 
dishonest. Alfred says this Adams hasn’t been of 
any real use for years, and they should have let him 
go as dead wood, but the old gentleman wouldn’t 
hear of it, and insisted on his being kept on the pay- 
roll; so they just decided to look on it as a sort of 
pension. Well, one morning last March the man 
had an attack of some sort down there, and Mr. 
Lamb got his own car out and went home with him, 
himself, and worried about him and went to see him 
no end, all the time he was ill.”’ 

“He would,’ Mrs. Palmer said, approvingly. 
*‘He’s a kind-hearted creature, that old man.” 

Her husband laughed. “Alfred says he thinks 
his kind-heartedness is about cured! It seems that 
as soon as the man got well again he deliberately 
walked off with the old gentleman’s glue secret. 
Just calmly stole it! Alfred says he believes that if 
he had a stroke in the office now, himself, his father 
wouldn’t lift a finger to help him!” 

Mrs. Palmer repeated the name to herself thought- 
fully. ‘‘‘Adams’—‘Virgil Adams,’ You said his 
name was Virgil Adams?” 


ALICE ADAMS | 333 


“Yes.” 

She looked at her daughter. ‘‘Why, you know 
who that is, Mildred,” she said, casually. ‘“‘It’s 
that Alice Adams’s father, isn’t it? Wasn’t his 
name Virgil Adams?” ! 

“T think it is,” Mildred said. 

Mrs. Palmer turned toward her husband. ‘“ You’ve 
seen this Alice Adams here. Mr. Lamb’s pet 
swindler must be her father.”’ 

Mr. Palmer passed a smooth hand over his neat 
gray hair, which was not disturbed by this effort to 
stimulate recollection. “‘Oh, yes,” he said. “Of 
course—certainly. Quite a good-looking girl—one 
of Mildred’s friends. How queer!” 

Mildred looked up, as if in a little alarm, but 
did not speak. Her mother set matters straight. 
“Fathers are amusing,” she said smilingly to Russell, 
who was looking at her, though how fixedly she did not 
notice; for she turned from him at once to enlighten 
her husband. “Every girl who meets Mildred, and 
tries to push the acquaintance by coming here until 
the poor child has to hide, isn’t a friend of hers, my 
dear!” 

Mildred’s eyes were downcast again, and a faint 
colour rose in her cheeks. “Oh, I shouldn’t put it 


334 ALICE, ADAMS 


quite that way about Alice Adams,” she said, in a low 
voice. “‘I saw something of her for a time. She’s 
not unattractive—in a way.” 

Mrs. Palmer settled the whole case of Alice care- 
lessly. “A pushing sort of girl,” she said. “A very 
pushing little person.” 3 

ae f * Mildred began; and, after hesitating, 
concluded, “‘I rather dropped her.” 





“Fortunate you’ve done so,”’ her father remarked, 
cheerfully. “Especially since various members of 
the Lamb connection are here frequently. They 
mightn’t think you’d show great tact in having her 
about the place.’ He laughed, and turned to his 
cousin. “All this isn’t very interesting to poor 
Arthur. How terrible people are with a newcomer 
in a town; they talk as if he knew all about every- 
body!’ 

“But we don’t know anything about these queer 
people, ourselves,” said Mrs. Palmer. ‘“‘We know 
something about the girl, of course—she used to be a 
bit too conspicuous, in fact! However, as you say, 
we might find a subject more interesting for Arthur.” 
She smiled whimsically upon the young man. ‘“‘Tell 
the truth,” she said. “Don’t you fairly detest going 
into business with that tyrant yonder?” . 


ALICE ADAMS 335 


“What? Yes—TI beg your pardon!” he stammered. 

“You were right,’ Mrs. Palmer said to her hus- 
band. ‘“‘ You’ve bored him so, talking about thievish 
clerks, he can’t even answer an honest question.” 

But Russell was beginning to recover his outward 
composure. “Try me again,” he said. “I’m afraid 
I was thinking of something else.” 

This was the best he found to say. There was a 
part of him that wanted to protest and deny, but he 
had not heat enough, in the chill that had come 
upon him. Here was the first “mention” of Alice, 
and with it the reason why it was the first: Mr. 
Palmer had difficulty in recalling her, and she 
happened to be spoken of, only because her father’s 
betrayal of a benefactor’s trust had been so peculiarly 
atrocious that, in the view of the benefactor’s family, 
it contained enough of the element of humour to 
warrant a mild laugh at a club. There was the 
deadliness of the story: its lack of malice, even of 
resentment. Deadlier still were Mrs. Palmer’s 
phrases: “a pushing sort of girl,” “a very pushing 
little person,” and “used to be a bit too conspicuous, 
in fact.” But she spoke placidly and by chance; 
being as obviously without unkindly motive as Mr. 
Palmer was when he related the cause of Alfred 


336 ALICE ADAMS 


Lamb’s amusement. Her opinion of the obscure 
young lady momentarily her topic had been ex- 
pressed, moreover, to her husband, and at her own 
table. She sat there, large, kind, serene—a protest 
might astonish but could not change her; and Russell, 
crumpling in his strained fingers the lace-edged little 
web of a napkin on his knee, found heart enough to 
grow red, but not enough to challenge her. 

She noticed his colour, and attributed it to the 
embarrassment of a scrupulously gallant gentleman 
caught in a lapse of attention to a lady. “Don’t be 
disturbed,” she said, benevolently. ‘‘ People aren’t 
expected to listen all the time to their relatives. A 
high colour’s very becoming to you, Arthur; but it 
really isn’t necessary between cousins. You can 
always be informal enough with us to listen only when 
you care to.” 

His complexion continued to be ruddier than 
usual, however, throughout the meal, and was still 
somewhat tinted when Mrs. Palmer rose. ‘‘The 
man’s bringing you cigarettes here,”’ she said, nodding 
to the two gentlemen. “We'll give you a chance to 
do the sordid kind of talking we know you really like. 
Afterwhile, Mildred will show you what’s in bloom 
in the hothouse, if you wish, Arthur.” 


ALICE ADAMS 337 
Mildred followed her, and, when they were alone 


in another of the spacious rooms, went to a window 
and looked out, while her mother seated herself near 
the center of the room in a gilt armchair, mellowed 
with old Aubusson tapestry. Mrs. Palmer looked 
thoughtfully at her. daughter’s back, but did not 
speak to her until coffee had been brought for them. 

“Thanks,”’ Mildred said, not turning, “I don’t 
care for any coffee, I believe.” 

“No?” Mrs. Palmer said, gently. “I’m afraid 
our good-looking cousin won’t think you’re very 
talkative, Mildred. You spoke only about twice at 
lunch. Ishouldn’t care for him to get the idea you’re 
piqued because he’s come here so little lately, should 
you?”’ 

“No, I shouldn’t,” Mildred answered in a low 
voice, and with that she turned quickly, and came to 
sit near her mother. “But it’s what I am afraid 
of! Mama, did you notice how red he got?” 

“You mean when he was caught not listening to a 
question of mine? Yes; it’s very becoming to him.” 

*“Mama, I don’t think that was the reason. I 
don’t think it was because he wasn’t listening, I 


39 


mean. 
“No?” 


338 ALICE ADAMS 


“T think his colour and his not listening came from 
the same reason,” Mildred said, and although she had 
come to sit near her mother, she did not look at her. 


393 





“I think it happened because you and papa 
She stopped. 

“Yes?”? Mrs. Palmer said, good-naturedly, to 
prompt her. “Your father and I did something 
embarrassing?” 

“*Mama, it was because of those things that came 
out about Alice Adams.” 

“How could that bother Arthur? Does he know 
her?”’ 

“Don’t you remember?” the daughter asked. 
“The day after my dance I mentioned how odd I 
thought it was in him—I was a little disappointed in 
him. Id been seeing that he met everybody, of 
course, but she was the only girl he asked to meet; 
and he did it as soon as he noticed her. I hadn’t 
meant to have him meet her—in fact, I was rather 
sorry I'd felt I had to ask her, because she—oh, well, 
she’s the sort that ‘tries for the new man,’ if she has 
half a chance; and sometimes they seem quite fasci- 
nated—for a time, that is. I thought Arthur was 
above all that; or at the very least I gave him credit 
for being too sophisticated.” 


ALICE ADAMS 339 


**T see,” Mrs. Palmer said, thoughtfully. “I re- 
member now that you spoke of it. You said it 
seemed a little peculiar, but of course it really wasn’t: 
a ‘new man’ has nothing to go by, except his own first 
impressions. You can’t blame poor Arthur—she’s 
quite a piquant looking little person. You think he’s 
seen something of her since then?” 

Mildred nodded slowly. “‘I never dreamed such 
a thing till yesterd2y, and even then I rather doubted 
it—till he got so red, just now! I was surprised 
when he asked to meet her, but he just danced with 
her once and didn’t mention her afterward; I forgot 
- all about it—in fact, I virtually forgot all about her. 


39> 





I'd seen quite a little of her 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Palmer. “She did keep coming 
here!” 

“But Id just about decided that it really wouldn’t 
do,”” Mildred went on. “She isn’t—well, I didn’t 
admire her.” 

“No,” her mother assented, and evidently followed 
a direct connection of thought in a speech apparently 
irrelevant. “I understand the young Malone wants 
to marry Henrietta. I hope she won’t; he seems 
rather a gross type of person.” 


“Oh, he’s just one,” Mildred said. “I don’t know 


340 ALICE ADAMS 


that he and Alice Adams were ever engaged—she 
never told me so. She may not have been engaged 
to any of them; she was just enough among the other 
girls to get talked about—and one of the reasons I felt 
a little inclined to be nice to her was that they 
seemed to be rather edging her out of the circle. It 
wasn’t long before I saw they were right, though. I 
happened to mention I was going to give a dance and 
she pretended to take it as a matter of course that I 
meant to invite her brother—at least, I thought she 
pretended; she may have really believed it. At any 
rate, I had to send him a card; but I didn’t intend to 
be let in for that sort of thing again, of course. She’s 
what you said, ‘pushing’; though I’m awfully sorry 
you said it.” 

“Why shouldn’t I have said it, my dear?” 

“Of course I didn’t say ‘shouldn’t.’” Mildred 
explained, gravely. “I meant only that I’m sorry it 
happened.” 

“Yes; but, why?” | 

**“Mama”’— Mildred turned to her, leaning for- 
ward and speaking in a lowered voice—‘ Mama, at 
first the change was so little it seemed as if Arthur 
hardly knew it himself. He’d been lovely to me 
always, and he was still lovely to me—but—oh, well, 


ALICE ADAMS 341 


you've understood—after my dance it was more as if 
it was just his nature and his training to be lovely to 
me, as he would be to everyone—a kind of politeness. 
He’d never said he cared for me, but after that I could 
see he didn’t. It was clear—after that. I didn’t 
know what had happened; I couldn’t think of any- 
thing I’d done. Mama—it was Alice Adams.” 

Mrs. Palmer set her little coffee-cup upon the table 
beside her, calmly following her own motion with her 
eyes, and not seeming to realize with what serious 
entreaty her daughter’s gaze was fixed upon her. 
Mildred repeated the last sentence of her revelation, 
and introduced a stress of insistence. 

“Mama, it was Alice Adams!”’ 

But Mrs. Palmer declined to be greatly impressed, 
so far as her appearance went, at least; and to empha- 
size her refusal, she smiled indulgently. ‘What 
makes you think so?” 

‘Henrietta told me yesterday.” 

At this Mrs. Palmer permitted herself to laugh 
softly aloud. “Good heavens! Is Henrietta a sooth- 
sayer? Or is she Arthur’s particular confidante?” 

“No. Ella Dowling told her.” 

Mrs. Palmer’s laughter continued. “Now we 
have it!” she exclaimed. “It’s a game of gossip: 


342 ALICE ADAMS 


Arthur tells Ella, Ella tells Henrietta, and Henrietta 
tells a 

“Don’t laugh, please, mama,” Mildred begged. 
*“Of course Arthur didn’t tell anybody. It’s round- 
about enough, but it’s true. I know it! I hadn’t 
quite believed it, but I knew it was true when he got 





so red. He looked—oh, for a second or so he looked 
—stricken! He thought I didn’t notice it. Mama, 
he’s been to see her almost every evening lately. 
They take long walks together. That’s why he hasn’t 
been here.” 

Of Mrs. Palmer’s laughter there was left only her 
indulgent smile, which she had not allowed to vanish. 
“Well, what of it?” she said. 

*“Mama!”’ 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Palmer. ‘“‘ What of it?” 

“But don’t you see?” Mildred’s well-tutored 
voice, though modulated and repressed even in her 
present emotion, nevertheless had a tendency to 
quaver. “It’s true. Frank Dowling was going to 
see her one evening and he saw Arthur sitting on the 
stoop with her, and didn’t go in. And Ella used to 
go to school with a girl who lives across the street 
from here. She told Ella 1 | 

“Oh, I understand,” Mrs. Palmer interrupted. 





ALICE ADAMS 343 


“Suppose he does go there. My dear, I said, ‘What 
of it?’” 

“TI don’t see what you mean, mama. I’m so 
afraid he might think we knew about it, and that you 
and papa said those things about her and her father 
on that account—as if we abused them because he 
goes there instead of coming here.” 

*“Nonsense!”’ Mrs. Palmer rose, went to a window, 
and, turning there, stood with her back to it, facing 
her daughter and looking at her cheerfully. “‘Non- 
sense, my dear! It was perfectly clear that she was 
mentioned by accident, and so was her father. What 
an extraordinary man! If Arthur makes friends with 
people like that, he certainly knows better than to 
expect to hear favourable opinions of them. Besides, 
it’s only a little passing thing with him.” 


99 





“Mama! When he goes there almost every 

*“Yes,”’ Mrs. Palmer said, dryly. “It seems to 
me I’ve heard somewhere that other young men have 
gone there ‘almost every!’ She doesn’t last, appar- 
ently. Arthur’s gallant, and he’s impressionable— 
but he’s fastidious, and fastidiousness is always the 
check on impressionableness. <A girl belongs to her 
family, too—and this one does especially, it strikes me! . 
Arthur’s very sensible; he sees more than you’d think.” 


344 ALICE ADAMS 


Mildred looked at her hopefully. “Then you 
don’t believe he’s likely to imagine we said those 
things of her in any meaning way?” 

At this, Mrs. Palmer laughed again. ‘‘There’s 
one thing you seem not to have noticed, Mildred.” 

*“What’s that?” 

**It seems to have escaped your attention that he 
never said a word.” 

“Mightn’t that mean——?”’ Mildred began, but 
she stopped. 

“No, it mightn’t,” her mother replied, compre. 
hending easily. ‘On the contrary, it might mean 
that instead of his feeling it too deeply to speak, he 
was getting a little illumination.” 

Mildred rose and came to her. “Why do you sup- 
pose he never told us he went there? Do you think 
he’s—do you think he’s pleased with her, and yet 
ashamed of it? Why do you suppose he’s never 
spoken of it?” : 

** Ah, that,’ Mrs. Palmer said;—‘‘that might pos- 
sibly be her own doing. If it is, she’s well paid by 
what your father and I said, because we wouldn’t 
have said it if we’d known that Arthur ” . She 
checked herself quickly. Looking over her daugh- 
ter’s shoulder, she saw the two. gentlemen coming 





ALICE ADAMS 345 


from the corridor toward the wide doorway of the 
room; and she greeted them cheerfully. ‘“‘If you’ve 
finished with each other for a while,’’ she added, 
“Arthur may find it a relief to put his thoughts on 
something prettier than a trust company—and more 
fragrant.” 

Arthur came to Mildred. 

“Your mother said at lunch that perhaps 
you d——”’ 

“I didn’t say ‘perhaps,’ Arthur,” Mrs. Palmer 
interrupted, to correct him. “I said she would. If 
you care to see and smell those lovely things out 
yonder, she’ll show them to you. Run along, 
children!” 


Half an hour later, glancing from a window, she 
saw them come from the hothouses and slowly cross 
the lawn. Arthur had a fine rose in his buttonhole 
and looked profoundly thoughtful. 


CHAPTER XXI 


HAT morning and noon had been warm, 

though the stirrings of a feeble breeze made 

weather not flagrantly intemperate; but at 
about three o’clock in the afternoon there came out 
of the southwest a heat like an affliction sent upon 
an accursed people, and the air was soon dead of it. 
Dripping negro ditch-diggers whooped with satires 
praising hell and hot weather, as the tossing shovels 
flickered up to the street level, where sluggish male 
pedestrians carried coats upon hot arms, and fanned 
themselves with straw hats, or, remaining covered, 
wore soaked handkerchiefs between scalp and straw. 
Clerks drooped in silent, big department stores; 
stenographers in offices kept as close to electric fans 
as the intervening bulk of their employers would let 
them; guests in hotels left the lobbies and went to lie 
unclad upon their beds; while in hospitals the pa- 
tients murmured querulously against the heat, and 
perhaps against some noisy motorist who strove to 


feel the air by splitting it, not troubled by any fore- 
346 


ALICE ADAMS 347 


boding that he, too, that hour next week, might need 
quiet near a hospital. The “‘hot spell” was a true 
spell, one upon men’s spirits; for it was so hot that, 
in suburban outskirts, golfers crept slowly back over 
the low undulations of their club lands, abandoning 
their matches and returning to shelter. 

Even on such a day, sizzling work had to be done, 
as in winter. There were glowing furnaces to be 
stoked, liquid metals to be poured; but such tasks 
found seasoned men standing to them; and in all the 
city probably no brave soul challenged the heat more 
gamely than Mrs. Adams did, when, in a corner of 
her small and fiery kitchen, where all day long her 
hired African immune cooked fiercely, she pressed 
her husband’s evening clothes with a hot iron. No 
doubt she risked her life, but she risked it cheerfully 
in so good and necessary a service for him. She 
would have given her life for him at any time, and 
both his and her own for her children. 

Unconscious of her own heroism, she was surprised 
to find herself rather faint when she finished her iron- 
ing. However, she took heart to believe that the 
clothes looked better, in spite of one or two scorched 
places; and she carried them upstairs to her hus- 
hand’s room before increasing blindness forced her to 


348 ALICE ADAMS 


grope for the nearest chair. Then trying to rise and 

walk, without having sufficiently recovered, she had 
to sit down again; but after a little while she was able 
to get upon her feet; and, keeping her hand against 
the wall, moved successfully to the door of her own 
room. Here she wavered; might have gone down, 
had she not been stimulated by the thought of how 
much depended upon her;—she made a final great 
effort, and floundered across the room to her bureau, 
where she kept some simple restoratives. They 
served her need, or her faith in them did; and she re- 
turned to her work. 

She went down the stairs, keeping a still tremulous 
hand upon the rail; but’ she smiled brightly when 
Alice looked up from below, where the woodwork was 
again being tormented with superfluous attentions. 

“Alice, don’t /”’ her mother said, commiseratingly. 
“You did all that this morning and it looks lovely. 
What’s the use of wearing yourself out on it? You 
ought to be lying down, so’s to look fresh for to- 
night.” 

**Hadn’t you better lie down yourself?” the 
daughter returned. “Are you il, mama?” 

“Certainly not. What in the world makes you 
think so?” 


ALICE ADAMS 349 


“You look pretty pale,” Alice said, and sighed 
heavily. “It makes me ashamed, having you work 
so hard—for me.” 

‘How foolish! I think it’s fun, getting ready to 
entertain a little again, like this. I only wish it 
hadn’t turned so hot: I’m afraid your poor father’ll 
suffer—his things are pretty heavy, I noticed. 
Well, it'll do him good to bear something for style’s 
sake this once, anyhow!”’ She laughed, and coming 
to Alice, bent down and kissed her. “‘Dearie,”’ she 
said, tenderly, ““wouldn’t you please slip upstairs 
now and take just a little teeny nap to please your 
mother?” 

But Alice responded only by moving her head 
slowly, in token of refusal. 

“Do!” Mrs. Adams urged. “You don’t want to 
look worn out, do you?”’ 

“Tl look all right,” Alice said, huskily. “Do you 
like the way I’ve arranged the furniture now? I’ve 
tried all the different ways it'll go.” 

*Tt’s lovely,” her mother said, admiringly. “TI 
thought the last way you had it was pretty, too. But 
you know best; I never knew anybody with so much 
taste. If you’d only just quit now, and take a little 


” 





rest 


350 ALICE ADAMS 


*“There’d hardly be time, even if I wanted to; it’s 
after five—but I couldn’t; really, I couldn’t. How 
do you think we can manage about Walter—to see 
that he wears his evening things, I mean?”’ 

Mrs. Adams pondered. “I’m afraid he’ll make a 
lot of objections, on account of the weather and 
everything. I wish we’d had a chance to tell him last 
night or this morning. I’d have telephoned to him 
this afternoon except—well, I scarcely like to call 


93 


him up at that place, since your father 





“No, of course not, mama.”’ 

“Tf Walter gets home late,’’ Mrs. Adams went on, 
“Tl just slip out and speak to him, in case Mr. 
Russell’s here before he comes. I'll just tell him he’s 
got to hurry and get his things on.” 

““Maybe he won’t come home to dinner,” Alice 
suggested, rather hopefully. “Sometimes he doesn’t.”’ 

“No; I think he’ll be here. When he doesn’t 
come he usually telephones by this time to say not to 
wait for him; he’s very thoughtful about that. Well, 
it really is getting late: I must go and tell her she 
ought to be preparing her fillet. Dearie, do rest a 
little.” 

““You’d much better do that yourself,” Alice 
called after her, but Mrs. Adams shook her head 


ALICE ADAMS 351 


cheerily, not pausing on her way to the fiery 
kitchen. 

Alice continued her useless labours for a time; then 
carried her bucket to the head of the cellar stairway, 
where she left it upon the top step; and, closing the 
door, returned to the “living-room.” Again she 
changed the positions of the old plush rocking-chairs, 
moving them into the corners where she thought they 
might be least noticeable; and while thus engaged she 
was startled by a loud ringing of the door-bell. Fora 
moment her face was panic-stricken, and she stood 
staring; then she realized that Russell would not 
arrive for another hour, at the earliest,and recovering 
her equipoise, went to the door. 

Waiting there, in a languid attitude, was a young 
coloured woman, with a small bundle under her arm 
and something malleable in her mouth. “Listen,” 
she said. ‘You folks expectin’ a coloured lady?” 

“No,” said Alice. ‘‘Especially not at the front 
door.” 

“Listen,” the coloured woman said again. 
“Listen. Say, listen. Ain’t they another coloured 
lady awready here by the day? Listen. Ain’t Miz 
Malena Burns here by the day this evenin’? Say, 
listen. This the number house she give me.” 


352 ALICE ADAMS 
“Are you the waitress? ’ Alice asked dismally. 


*Yes’m, if Malena here.” 

**Malena is here,” Alice said, and hesitated; but 
she decided not to send the waitress to the back door; 
it might be a risk. She let her in. “What’s your 
name?” 

“Me? I’m name’ Gertrude. Miss Gertrued Col- 
lamus.”’ 

*Did you bring a cap and apron?”’ 

Gertrude took the little bundle from under her 
arm. “Yes’m. I’m all fix’.” 

“I’ve already set the table,” Alice said. “T’'ll 
show you what we want done.” 

She led the way to the dining-room, and, after 
offering some instruction there, received by Gertrude 
with languor and a slowly moving jaw, she took her 
into the kitchen, where the cap and apron were put 
on. The effect was not fortunate; Gertrude’s eyes 
were noticeably bloodshot, an affliction made more 
apparent by the white cap; and Alice drew her mother 
apart, whispering anxiously, 

*“Do you suppose it’s too late to get someone 
else? ”’ 

“Tm afraid it is,’ Mrs. Adams said. “Malena 


says it was hard enough to get her! You have to 


ALICE ADAMS 353 


pay them so much that they only work when they 
feel like it.” 

“Mama, could you ask her to wear her cap 
straighter? Every time she moves her head she gets 
it on one side, and her skirt’s too long behind and too 
short in front—and oh, I’ve never seen such feet!” 
Alice laughed desolately. “And she must quit that 
terrible chewing!” : 

“Never mind; T’ll get to work with her. I'll 
straighten her out all I can, dearie; don’t worry.” 
Mrs. Adams patted her daughter’s shoulder en- 
couragingly. “‘Now you can’t do another thing, and | 
if you don’t run and begin dressing you won’t be 
ready. It'll only take me a minute to dress, myself, 
and I’ll be down long before you will. Run, darling! 
T’ll look after everything.” 

Alice nodded vaguely, went up to her room, and, 
after only a moment with her mirror, brought from 
her closet the dress of white organdie she had worn 
the night when she met Russell for the first time. She 
laid it carefully upon her bed, and began to make 
ready to put it on. Her mother came in, half an 
hour later, to “‘fasten”’ her. | 


“I’m all dressed,” Mrs. Adams said, briskly. ‘‘Of 
course it doesn’t matter. He won’t know what the 


354 ALICE ADAMS 


rest of us even look like: How could he? I know 
I’m an old sight, but all I want is to look respectable. 
Do I?” 

*“You look like the best woman in the world; that’s 
all!’ Alice said, with a little gulp. 

Her mother laughed and gave her a final scrutiny. 
“You might use just a tiny bit more colour, dearie— 
I’m afraid the excitement’s made you a little pale. 
And you must brighten up! There’s sort of a look in 
your eyes as if you’d got in a trance and couldn’t get 
out. You’ve had it all day. I must run: your 
father wants me to help him with his studs. Walter 
hasn’t come yet, but Ill look after him; don’t worry, 
And you better hurry, dearie, if you're going to take 
any time fixing the flowers on the table.” 

She departed, while Alice sat at the mirror again, 
to follow her advice concerning a “tiny bit more 
colour.” Before she had finished, her father knocked 
at the door, and, when she responded, came in. He 
was dressed in the clothes his wife had pressed; but 
he had lost substantially in weight since they were 
made for him; no one would have thought that they 
had been pressed. They hung from him volumi- 
nously, seeming to be the clothes of a larger 
man. 


ALICE ADAMS 355 


“Your mother’s gone downstairs,” he said, in a 
voice of distress. “‘One of the buttonholes in my 
shirt is too large and I can’t keep the dang thing 
fastened. J don’t know what to do about it! I only 
got one other white shirt, and it’s kind of ruined: I 
tried it before I did this one. Do you s’pcse you 
could do anything?” 

*“*T’ll see,” she said. 

“My collar’s got a frayed edge,” he complained, 
as she examined his troublesome shirt. ‘“‘It’s a good 
deal like wearing a saw; but I expect it’ll wilt down 
flat pretty soon, and not bother me Jong. I’m liable 
to wilt down flat, myself, I expect; I don’t know as 
I remember any such hot night in the last ten or 
twelve years.” He lifted his head and sniffed the 
flaccid air, which was laden with a heavy cdour. 
“My, but that smell is pretty strong!” he said. 

“Stand still, please, papa,” Alice begged him. 
“I can’t see what’s the matter if you move around. 
How absurd you are about your old glue smell, papa! 
There isn’t a vestige of it, of course.” 

“T didn’t mean glue,” he informed her. “I mean 
cabbage. Is that fashionable now, to have cabbage 
when there’s company for dinner?” 3 

“That isn’t cabbage, papa. It’s Brussels sprouts.” 


356 ALICE ADAMS 


“Oh, is it? Idon’t mind it much, because it keeps 
that glue smell off me, but it’s fairly strong. I ex- 
pect you don’t notice it so much because you been in 
the house with it all along, and got used to it while it 
was growing.” | 

“Tt is pretty dreadful,” Alice said. “Are all the 
windows open downstairs?” 

“TIl go down and see, if you’ll just fix that hole 
up for me.” 

“I’m afraid I can’t,”’ she said. ‘“‘Not unless you 
take your shirt off and bring it to me. I'll have to 
sew the hole smaller.” 

“Oh, well, Tl go ask your mother to——”’ 

“No,” said Alice. “‘She’s got everything on her 
hands. Run and take it off. Hurry, papa; I’ve 
got to arrange the flowers on the table before he 
comes.” 

He went away, and came back presently,. half 
undressed, bringing the shirt. “'There’s. one com- 
fort,’ he remarked, pensively, as she worked. “I’ve 
got that collar off—for a while, anyway. I wish I 
could go to table like this; I could stand it a good deal 
better. Do you seem to be making any Deana 
with the dang thing?” 

“I think probably I can 





ALICE ADAMS 357 


Downstairs the door-bell rang, and Alice’s arms 
jerked with the shock. . 

“Golly!” her father said. ‘Did you stick your 
finger with that fool needle?” 

She gave him a blank stare. ‘“He’s come!” 

She was not mistaken, for, upon the little veranda, 
Russell stood facing the closed door at last. How- 
ever, it remained closed for a considerable time after 
he rang. Inside the house the warning summons of 
the bell was immediately followed by another sound, 
audible to Alice and her father as a crash preceding 
a series of muffled falls. Then came a distant voice, 
bitter in complaint. | 

*“Oh, Lord!” said Adams. ‘“ What’s that?” 

Alice went to the top of the front stairs, and her 
mother appeared in the hall below. ) 

“Mama!” 

Mrs. Adams looked up. “It’s all right,” she said, 
in a loud whisper. “Gertrude fell down the cellar 
stairs. Somebody left a bucket there, and——”’ She 
was interrupted by a gasp from Alice, and hastened ' 
to reassure her. “Don’t worry, dearie. She may 
limp a little, but-———”’ 

Adams leaned over the banisters. “Did she 


break anything?” he asked. 


558 ALICE ADAMS 


“Hush!” his wife whispered. “‘No. She seems 
upset and angry about it, more than anything else; 
but she’s rubbing herself, and she’ll be all right in 
time to bring in the little sandwiches. Alice! Those 
flowers!” 

“I know, mama. But——” 

“Hurry!” Mrs. Adams warned her. “Both of 
you hurry! I must let him in!” 

‘She turned to the door, smiling cordially, even 
before she opened it. “Do come right in, Mr. 
Russell,’’ she said, loudly, lifting her voice for ad- 
ditional warning to those above. “I’m so glad to re- 
ceive you informally, this way, in our own little home. 
There’s a hat-rack here under the stairway,”’ she con- 
tinued, as Russell, murmuring some response, came 
into the hall. “I’m afraid you'll think it’s almost 
too informal, my coming to the door, but unfortu- 
nately our housemaid’s just had a little accident—oh, 
nothing to mention! I just thought we better not 
keep you waiting any longer. Will you step into 
our living-room, please?” 

She led the way between the two small columns, 
and seated herself in one of the plush rocking-chairs, 
selecting it because Alice had once pointed out that 
the chairs, themselves, were less noticeable when 


ALICE ADAMS 359 


they had people sitting in them. “Do sit down, Mr. 
Russell; it’s so very warm it’s really quite a trial 
just to stand up!” 

“Thank you,” he said, as he took a seat. “Yes. 
It is quite warm.” And this seemed to be the extent 
of his responsiveness for the moment. He was grave, 
rather pale; and Mrs. Adams’s impression of him, as 
she formed it then, was of “a distinguished-looking 
young man, really elegant in the best sense of the 
word, but timid and formal when he first meets you.” 
She beamed upon him, and used with everything she 
said a continuous accompaniment of laughter, 
meaningless except that it was meant to convey 
cordiality. ‘Of course we do have a great deal of 
warm weather,” she informed him. “I’m glad it’s 
so much cooler in the house than it is outdoors.”’ 

“Yes,” he said. ‘“Itis pleasanter indoors.” And, 
stopping with this single untruth, he permitted him- 
self the briefest glance about the room; then his eyes 
returned to his smiling hostess. 

“Most people makea great fussabout dist weather,” 
she said. ““The only person I know who doesn’t 
mind the heat the way other people do is Alice. She 
always seems as cool as if we had a breeze blowing, no 
matter how hot it is. But then she’s so amiable she 


360 i ALICE ADAMS 


never minds anything. It’s just her character. 


She’s always been that way since she was a little 
child; always the same to everybody, high and low. 


I think character’s the most important thing in the 
world, after all, don’t you, Mr. Russell?” 

““Yes,”’ he said solemnly; and touched his bedewed 
white forehead with a handkerchief. 

“Indeed it is,’ she agreed with herself, never fail- 
ing to continue her murmur of laughter. “That’s 
what I’ve always told Alice; but she never sees any- 
thing good in herself, and she just laughs at me when 
I praise her. She sees good in everybody else in the 
world, no matter how unworthy they are, or how 
they behave toward her; but she always under- 
estimates herself. From the time she was a little 
child she was always that way. When some other 
little girl would behave selfishly or meanly toward 
her, do you think she’d come and tell me? Never 
a word to anybody! The little thing was too proud! 
She was the same way about school. |The teacher 
had to tell me when she took a prize; she’d bring it 
home and keep it in her room without a word about 
it to her father and mother. Now, Walter was just 
the other way. Walter would——-” But here Mrs. 
Adams checked herself, though she increased the 


ALICE ADAMS 361 


volume of her laughter. “How silly of me!” she 
exclaimed. “I expect you know how mothers are, 
though, Mr. Russell. Give us a chance and we'll talk 
about our children forever! Alice would feel terribly 
if she knew how I’ve been going on about her to you.” 

Iz this Mrs. Adams was right, though she did not 
herself suspect it, and upon an almost inaudible word 
or two from him she went on with her topic. ‘Of 
course my excuse is that few mothers have a daugh- 
ter like Alice. I suppose we all think the same way 
about our children, but some of us must be right 
when we feel we’ve got the best. Don’t you think 
so?” 

“Yes. Yes, indeed.”’ 

“Tm sure J am!” she laughed. ‘“T’'ll let the 
others speak for themselves.” She paused reflec- 
tively. “No; I think a mother knows when she’s 
got a treasure in her family. If she hasn’t got one, 
she’ll pretend she has, maybe; but if she has, she 
knows it. I certainly know J have. She’s always 
been what people call ‘the joy of the household ’—al- 
ways cheerful, no matter what went wrong, and al- 
ways ready to smooth things over with some bright, 
witty saying. You must be sure not to tell we’ve 


had this little chat about her—she’d just be furious 


362 ALICE ADAMS 


with me—but she zs such a dear child! You won’t 
tell her, will you?” 

“No,” he said, and again applied the handker- 
chief to his forehead for an instant. ‘No, I'll on 
He paused, and finished lamely: “T’ll—not tell 
her.”’ 


Thus reassured, Mrs. Adams set before him some 





details of her daughter’s popularity at sixteen, dwell- 
ing upon Alice’s impartiality among her young 
suitors: “‘She never could bear to hurt their feelings, 
and always treated all of them just alike. About 
half a dozen of them were just bound to marry her! 
Naturally, her father and I considered any such idea 
ridiculous; she was too young, of course.” 

Thus the mother went on with her biographical 
sketches, while the pale young man sat facing her 
under the hard overhead light of a white globe, set 
to the ceiling; and listened without interrupting. 
She was glad to have the chance to tell him a few 
things about Alice he might not have guessed for 
himself, and, indeed, she had planned to find such an 
opportunity, if she could; but this was getting to be 
altogether too much ef one, she felt. As time passed, 
she was like an actor who must improvise to keep the 
audience from perceiving that his fellow-players have 


/ 


ALICE ADAMS 363 


missed their cues; but her anxiety was not betrayed 
to the still listener; she had a valiant soul. 

Alice, meanwhile, had arranged her little roses on 
the table in as many ways, probably, as there were 
blossoms; and she was still at it when her father 
arrived in the dining-room by way of the back stairs 
and the kitchen. 

“It’s pulled out again,” he said. “But I guess 
there’s no help for it now; it’s too late, and anyway it 
lets some air into me when it bulges. I can sit so’s 
it won’t be noticed much, I expect. Isn’t it time you 
quit bothering about the looks of the table? Your 
mother’s been talking to him about half an hour 
now, and I had the idea he came on your account, 
not hers. Hadn’t you better go and——” 

“Just a minute.” Alice said, piteously. “‘Do you 
think it looks all right?” 

“The flowers? Fine! Hadn’t you better leave 
°em the way they are, though?” 


> 


“Just a minute,” she begged again. “Just one 
minute, papa!’’ And she exchanged a rose in front 
of Russell’s plate for one that seemed to her a little 
larger. 

*You better come on,” Adams said, moving to the 


door. 


364 ALICE ADAMS 


“Just one more second, papa.” She shook her 
head, lamenting. “Oh, I wish we’d rented some 
silver!” 

“Why?” 

**Because so much of the plating has rubbed off 
a lot of it. Justa second, papa.” And as she spoke 
she hastily went round the table, gathering the 
knives and forks and spoons that she thought had 
their plating best preserved, and exchanging them 
for more damaged pieces at Russell’s place. 
“There!”’ she sighed, finally. “Now Ill come.” 
But at the door she paused to look back dubiously, 
over her shoulder. 

*“What’s the matter now?” 

“The roses. I believe after all I shouldn’t have 
tried that vine effect; I ought to have kept them in 
water, in the vase. It’s so hot, they already begin 
to look a little wilted, out on the dry tablecloth like 
that. I believe Pll o 

“Why, look here, Alice!” he remonstrated, as she 





seemed disposed to turn back. ‘“‘Everything’ll burn 


99 





up on the stove if you keep on 

“Oh, well,”’ she said, “the vase was terribly ugly; 
I can’t do any better. We'll go in.” But with her 
hand on the door-knob she paused. ‘‘No, papa. 


ALICE ADAMS 365 


We mustn’t go in by this door. It might look as 
if- 39 

**As if what?” 

“Never mind,” she said. “Let’s go the other 


99 


way. 





“TI don’t see what difference it makes,” he grum- 
bled, but nevertheless followed her through the 
kitchen, and up the back stairs then through the 
upper hallway. At the top of the front stairs she 
paused for a moment, drawing a deep breath and 
then, before her father’s puzzled eyes, a transfor- 
mation came upon her. Her shoulders, like her eye- 
lids, had been drooping, but now she threw her head 
back: the shoulders straightened, and the lashes 
lifted over sparkling eyes; vivacity came to her whole 
body in a flash; and she tripped down the steps, with 
her pretty hands rising in time to the lilting little 
tune she had begun to hum. 

At the foot of the stairs, one of those pretty hands 
extended itself at full arm’s length toward Russell, 
and continued to be extended until it reached his 
own hand as he came to meet her. ‘“‘How terrible 
of me!” she exclaimed. “To be so late coming 
down! And papa, too—I think you know each 
other.” 


366 ALICE ADAMS 


Her father was advancing toward the young man, 
expecting to shake hands with him, but Alice stood 
between them, and Russell, a little flushed, bowed 
to him gravely over her shoulder, without looking at 
him; whereupon Adams, slightly disconcerted, put 
his hands in his pockets and turned to his wife. 

“I guess dinner’s more’n ready,” he said. “We 
better go sit down.” 

But she shook her head at him fiercely, ‘‘Wait!’’ 
she whispered. 

“What for? For Walter?” 

**No; he can’t be coming,”’ she returned, hurriedly, 
and again warned him by a shake of her head. ‘“‘Be 
quiet!” 

“Oh, well 

“Sit down!” 

He was thoroughly mystified, but obeyed her 
gesture and went to the rocking-chair in the opposite 


” he muttered. 





corner, where he sat down, and, with an expression 
of meek inquiry, awaited events. 

Meanwhile, Alice prattled on: “It’s really not a 
fault of mine, being tardy. The shameful truth is I 
was trying to hurry papa. He’s incorrigible: he 
stays so late at his terrible old factory—terrible new 
factory, I should say. 1 hope you don’t hate us for 


ALICE ADAMS 367 


making you dine with us in such fearful weather! 
I’m nearly dying of the heat, myself, so you have a 
fellow-sufferer, if that pleases you. Why is it we 
always bear things better if we think other people 
have to stand them, too?” - And she added, with an 
excited laugh: “Silly of us, don’t you think?”’ 

Gertrude had just made her entrance from the 
dining-room, bearing a tray. She came slowly, with 
an air of resentment; and her skirt still needed ad- 
justing, while her lower jaw moved at intervals, 
though not now upon any substance, but reminis- 
cently, of habit. She halted before Adams, facing 
him. 

He looked plaintive. “‘ What you want o’ me?” he 
asked. 

For response, she extended the tray toward him 
with a gesture of indifference; but he still appeared to 
be puzzled. “What in the world 
then caught his wife’s eye, and had presence of mind 





?” he began, 


enough to take a damp and plastic sandwich from the 
tray. ‘‘ Well, Ill éry one,” he said, but a moment 
later, as he fulfilled this promise, an expression of 
intense dislike came upon his features, and he would 
have returned the sandwich to Gertrude. However, 
as she had crossed the room to Mrs. Adams he 


368 ALICE ADAMS 


checked the gesture, and sat helplessly, with the 
sandwich in his hand. He made another effort to 
get rid of it as the waitress passed him, on her way 
back to the dining-room, but she appeared not to 
observe him, and he continued to be troubled by it. 

Alice was a loyal daughter. ‘These are delicious, 
mama,” she said; and turning to Russell, “You 
missed it; you should have taken one. Too bad we 
couldn’t have offered you what ought to go with it, 
of course, but——” 

She was interrupted by the second entrance of 
Gertrude, who announced, “Dinner serve’,” and 
retired from view. 

“Well, well!” Adams said, rising from his chair, 
with relief. ‘“‘That’s good! Let’s go see if we can 
eat it.” And as the little group moved toward the 
open door of the dining-room he disposed of his 
sandwich by dropping it in the empty fireplace. 

Alice, glancing back over her shoulder, was the 
only one who saw him, and she shuddered in spite of 
herself. Then, seeing that he looked at her en- 
treatingly, as if he wanted to explain that he was 
doing the best he could, she smiled upon him sunnily, 


and began to chatter to Russell again. 


CHAPTER XXII 


| LICE kept her sprightly chatter going when 
A they sat down, though the temperature of 
44. the room and the sight of hot soup might 
have discouraged a less determined gayety. More- 
over, there were details as unpropitious as the heat: 
the expiring roses expressed not beauty but pathos, 
and what faint odour they exhaled was no rival to the 
lusty emanations of the Brussels sprouts; at the head 
of the table, Adams, sitting low in his chair, appeared 
to be unable to flatten the uprising wave of his 
starched bosom; and Gertrude’s manner and ex- 
pression were of a recognizable hostility during the 
long period of vain waiting for the cups of soup to be 
emptied. Only Mrs. Adams made any progress in 
this direction; the others merely feinting, now and 
then lifting their spoons as if they intended to do 
something with them. 
Alice’s talk was little more than cheerful sound, 
but, to fill a desolate interval, served its purpose; 


and her mother supported her with every faithful 
oo 


370 ALICE ADAMS 


cooings of applausive laughter. “What a funny 
thing weather is!” the girl ran on. “Yesterday it 
was cool—angels had charge of it—and to-day they 
had an engagement somewhere else, so the devil saw 
his chance and started to move the equator to the 
North Pole; but by the time he got half-way, he 
thought of something else he wanted to do, and went 
off; and left the equator here, right on top of us! I 
wish he’d come back and get it!” 

“Why, Alice dear!” her mother cried, fondly. 
“What an imagination! Not a very pious one, I’m 
afraid Mr. Russell might think, though!” Here she 
gave Gertrude a hidden signal to remove the soup; 
but, as there was no response, she had to make the 
signal more conspicuous. Gertrude was leaning 
against the wall, her chin moving like a slow pen- 
dulum, her streaked eyes fixed mutinously upon 
Russell. Mrs. Adams nodded several times, in- 
creasing the emphasis of her gesture, while Alice 
talked briskly; but the brooding waitress continued 
to brood. A faint snap of the fingers failed to dis- 
turb her; nor was a covert hissing whisper of avail, 
and Mrs. Adams was beginning to show signs of 
strain when her daughter relieved her. 

“Imagine our trying to eat anything so hot as 


ALICE ADAMS 371 


soup on a night like this!’’ Alice laughed. “What 
could have been in the cook’s mind not to give us 
something iced and jellied instead? Of course it’s 
because she’s equatorial, herself, originally, and only 
feels at home when Mr. Satan moves it north.” She 
looked round at Gertrude, who stood behind her. 
**Do take this dreadful soup away!” 

Thus directly addressed, Gertrude yielded her 
attention, though unwillingly, and as if she decided 
only by a hair’s weight not to revolt, instead. How- 
ever, she finally set herself in slow motion; but over- 
looked the supposed head of the table, seeming to be 
unaware of the sweltering little man who sat there. 
As she disappeared toward the kitchen with but three 
of the cups upon her tray he turned to look pk m- 
tively after her, and ventured an attempt torecall her. 

‘“‘Here!’’ he said, in a low voice. ‘‘Here, you!” 

“What is it, Virgil?’ his wife asked. 

*What’s her name?”’ 

Mrs. Adams gave him a glance of sudden panic, 
and, seeing that the guest of the evening was not 
looking at her, but down at the white cloth before 
him, she frowned hard, and shook her head. 

Unfortunately Alice was not observing her mother, 
and asked, innocently: “‘ What’s whose name, papa?” 


372 ALICE ADAMS 


“Why, this young darky woman,” he explained. 
“She left mine.” 

““Never mind,” Alice laughed. “There’s hope 
for you, papa. She hasn’t gone forever!”’ 

“T don’t know about that,” he said, not duction 
with this impulsive assurance. “She looked like she 
is.’ And his remark, considered as a prediction, 
had begun to seem warranted before Gertrude’s re- 
turn with china preliminary to the next stage of the 
banquet. 

Alice proved herself equal to the long gap, and 
rattled on through it with a spirit richly justifying 
her mother’s praise of her as “always ready to 
smooth things over”; for here was more than long 
delay to be smoothed over. She smoothed over her 
father and mother for Russell; and she smoothed over 
him for them, though he did not know it, and re- 
mained unaware of what he owed her. With all this, 
throughout her prattlings, the girl’s bright eyes kept 
seeking his with an eager gayety, which but little 
veiled both interrogation and entreaty—as if she 
asked: “Is it too much for you? Can’t you bear it? 
Won’t you please bear it? I would for you. Won't 
you give me a sign that it’s all right?” 

He looked at her but fleetingly, and seemed to 


ALICE ADAMS 373 


‘suffer from the heat, in spite of every manly effort not 
to wipe his brow too often. His colour, after rising 
‘when he greeted Alice and her father, had departed, 
leaving him again moistly pallid; a condition arising 

from discomfort, no doubt, but, considered as a 
decoration, almost poetically becoming to him. Not 
less becoming was the faint, kindly smile, which 
showed his wish to express amusement and approval; 
and yet it was a smile rather strained and plaintive, 
as if he, like Adams, could only do the best he could. 

' He pleased Adams, who thought him a fine young 
man, and decidedly the quietest that Alice had ever 
shown to her family. In her father’s opinion this 
‘was no small merit; and it was to Russell’s credit, too, 
that he showed embarrassment upon this first 
intimate presentation; here was an applicant with 
both reserve and modesty. “So far, he seems to 
be first rate—a mighty fine young man,” Adams 
thought; and, prompted by no wish to part from Alice 
but by reminiscences of apparent candidates less 
pleasing, he added, “At last!” 

Alice’s liveliness never flagged. Her smoothing 
over of things was an almost continuous performance, 
and:had to be. Yet, while she chattered through the 
hot and heavy courses, the questions she asked her- 


374 ALICE ADAMS 


self were as continuous as the performance, and as 
poignant as what hereyesseemed to be asking Russell. 
Why had she not prevailed over her mother’s fear of 
being “‘skimpy?”’ Had she been, indeed, as her 
mother said she looked, “in a trance?” But above 
all: What was the matter with him? What had 
happened? For she told herself with painful humour 
that something even worse than this dinner must be 
“the matter with him.” 

The small room, suffocated with the odour of 
boiled sprouts, grew hotter and hotter as more and 
more food appeared, slowly borne in, between 
deathly long waits, by the resentful, loud-breathing 
Gertrude. And while Alice still sought Russell’s 
glance, and read the look upon his face a dozen differ- 
ent ways, fearing all of them; and while the straggling 
little flowers died upon the stained cloth, she felt her 
heart grow as heavy as the food, and wondered that 
it did not die like the roses. 

With the arrival of coffee, the host bestirred him- 
self to make known a hospitable regret, “By 
George!’ he said. ‘‘I meant to buy seme cigars.” 
He addressed himself apologetically to the guest. 
**T don’t know what I was thinking about, to forget 
to bring some home with me. I don’t use ’em my- 


ALICE ADAMS 375 


self—unless somebody hands me one, you might say. 
I’ve always been a pipe-smoker, pure and simple, but 
I ought to remembered for kind of an occasion like 
this.” 

“Not at all,” Russell said. ‘“‘I’m not smoking at 
all lately; but when I do, I’m like you, and smoke 
a pipe.” 

Alice started, remembering what she had told him 
when he overtook her on her way from the tobacco- 
nist’s; but, after a moment, looking at him,shedecided 
that he must have forgotten it. If he had remem- 
bered, she thought, he could not have helped glancing 
at her. On the contrary, he seemed more at ease, 
just then, than he had since they sat down, for he was 
favouring her father with a thoughtful attention as 
Adams responded to the introduction of a man’s 
topic into the conversation at last. “‘Well, Mr. 
Russell, I guess you’re right, at that. I don’t say 
but what cigars may be all right for a man that can 
afford ’em, if he likes ’em better than a pipe, but 





you take a good old pipe now & 

He continued, and was getting well into the 
eulogium customarily provoked by this theme, when 
there came an interruption: the door-bell rang, and 
he paused inquiringly, rather surprised. 


376 _ ALICE ADAMS 
Mrs. Adams spoke to Gertrude in an under- 


tone: 

“Just say, “Not at home.’” 

What?” 

“Tf it’s callers, just say we’re not at home.” 

Gertrude spoke out freely: “You mean you 
astin’ me to *tend you’ front do’ fer you?” 

She seemed both incredulous and affronted, but 
Mrs. Adams persisted, though somewhat apprehen- 
sively. “‘Yes. Hurry—uh—please. Just say we're 
not at home—if you please.” 

Again Gertrude obviously hesitated between com- 
pliance and revolt, and again the meeker course 
fortunately prevailed with her. She gave Mrs. 
Adams a stare, grimly derisive, then departed. 
When she came back she said: 

*He say he wait.” 

“But I told you to tell anybody we were not at 
home,” Mrs. Adams returned. ‘Who is it?” 

“Say he name Mr. Law.” 

We don’t know any Mr. Law.” . 

““Yes’m; he know you. Say he anxious to speak 
Mr. Adams. Say he wait.” 
~ €Tell him Mr. Adams is engaged.” 

“Hold on a minute,” Adams intervened. ‘Law? 


ALICE ADAMS 377 


No. I don’t know any Mr. Law. You sure you got 
the name right?” 

“Say he name Law,” Gertrude replied, looking at 
the ceiling to express her fatigue. “Law. ’S all he 
tell me; ’s all I know.” 

Adams frowned. “Law,” he said. ‘“‘Wasn’t it 
maybe “Lohr?’” 

“Law,” Gertrude repeated. ’S all he tell me; ’s 
all I know.” 

*“What’s he look like?” 

“He ain’t much,” she said. “’Bout you’ age; 
got brustly white moustache, nice eye-glasses.”’ 

“It’s Charley Lohr!’ Adams exclaimed. “I'll go 
see what he wants.” 

“But, Virgil,” his wife remonstrated, “do finish 
your coffee; he might stay all evening. Maybe he’s 
come to call.” : 

Adams laughed. ‘“‘He isn’t much of a caller, I 
expect. Don’t worry: Pll take him up to my room.” 
And turning toward Russell, “Ah—if you’ll just ex- 
cuse me,’ he said; and went out to his visitor. 

When he had gone, Mrs. Adams finished her coffee, 
and, having glanced intelligently from her guest to 
her daughter, she rose. “I think perhaps I ought to 
go and shake hands with Mr. Lohr, myself,” she said, 


378 ALICE ADAMS 


adding in explanation to Russell, as she reached the 
door, ‘‘He’s an old friend of my husband’s and it’s 
a very long time since he’s been here.”’ 

Alice nodded and smiled to her brightly, but upon 
the closing of the door, the smile vanished; all her 
liveliness disappeared; and with this change of ex- 
pression her complexion itself appeared to change, 
so that her rouge became obvious, for she was pale 
beneath it. However, Russell did not see the 
alteration, for he did not look at her; and it was but 
a momentary lapse—the vacation of a tired girl, who 
for ten seconds lets herself look as she feels. Then 
she shot her vivacity back into place as by some 
powertul spring. 

‘Penny for your thoughts!”’ she cried, and tossed 
one of the wilted roses at him, across the table. “TU 
bid more than a penny; I'll bid tuppence—no, a poor 
little dead rose—a rose for your. thoughts, Mr- 
Arthur Russell! What are they?”’ 

He shook hishead. “I’m afraid I haven’t any.” 

“No, of course not,” she said.. “‘Who could have 
thoughts in weather like this? Will you ever forgive 
us?” 

“What for?” | : 

“Making you eat such a heavy dinner—I mean 


ALICE ADAMS 379 


took at such a heavy dinner, because you certainly 
didn’t do more than look at it—on such anight! But 
the crime draws to a close, and you can begin to 
cheer up!” She laughed gaily, and, rising, moved to 
the door. “Let’s go in the other room; your fearful 
duty is almost done, and you can run home as soon 
as you want to. That’s what you’re dying to do.” 

“Not at all,” he said in a voice so feeble that she 
laughed aloud. 

“Good gracious!” she cried. “I hadn’t realized 
it was that bad!” 

For this, though he contrived to laugh, he seemed 
to have no verbal) retort whatever; but followed her 
into the “living-room,’”’ where she stopped and 
turned, facing him. 

**Has it really been so frightful?” she asked. 

“Why, of course not. Not at all.” 

“Of course yes, though, you mean!” 

“Not at all. It’s been most kind of your mother 
and father and you.” 


> 


“Do you know,” she said, “you’ve never once 
looked at me for more than a second at a time the 
whole evening? And it seemed to me I looked rather 
nice to-night, too!” 


“You always do,” he murmured. 


380 ALICE ADAMS 


> 


“I don’t see how you know,” she returned; and 
then stepping closer to him, spoke with gentle solici- 
tude: “Tell me: you’re really feeling wretchedly, 
- aren’t you? I know you’ve got a fearful headache, 
or something. Tell me!” 

“Not at all.” 

*You are ill—I’m sure of it.” 

“Not at all.” 

“On your word?” 


“Tm really quite all right.” 





‘But if you are ” she began; and then, looking 
at him with a desperate sweetness, as if this were her 
last resource to rouse him, “‘What’s the matter, little 
boy?” she said with lisping tenderness. “Tell 
auntie!” | 

It was a mistake, for he seemed to flinch, and to 
lean backward, however, slightly. She turned away 
instantly, with a flippant lift and drop of both 
hands. ‘‘Oh, my dear!” she laughed. “I won’t eat 
you!” | 

And as the discomfited young man watched her, 
seeming able to lift his eyes, now that her back was 
turned, she went to the front door and pushed open 
the screen. “Let’s go out on the porch,” she said. 


“Where we belong!” 


ALICE ADAMS 381 


Then, when he had followed her out, and they were 
seated, “‘Isn’t this better?” she asked. ‘“‘Don’t you 
feel more like yourself out here?” 





He began a murmur: “Not at “ 

But she cut him off sharply: “Please don’t say 
‘Not at all’ again!” 

**[’m sorry.” 

“You do seem sorry about something,” she said. 
“What isit? Isn’tit time you were delliniy me what’s 
the matter?” 

*“Nothing. Indeed nothing’s the matter. Of 
course one 7s rather affected by such weather as this. 
It may make one a little quieter than usual, of 
course.” 

She sighed, and let the tired muscles of her face 
rest. Under the hard lights, indoors, they had 
served her until they ached, and it was a luxury to 
feel that in the darkness no grimacings need call 
upon them. 





*? she said. 


**T can only assure you there’s nothing to tell.” 
“IT know what an ugly little house it is,” she said. 


**Of course, if you won’t tell me 


“Maybe it was the furniture—or mama’s vases that 
upset you. Or was it mama herself—or papa?”’ 
‘Nothing ‘upset’ me.” 


~ 


382 ALICE ADAMS 


At that she uttered a monosyllable of doubting 
laughter. “‘I wonder why you say that.” 

**Because it’s so.” 

“No. It’s because you're too kind, or too conscien- 
tious, or too embarrassed—anyhow too something— 
to tell me.” She leaned forward, elbows on knees and 
chin in hands, in the reflective attitude she knew how 
to make graceful. “I have a feeling that you’re 
not going to tefl me,” she said, slowly. ‘“‘ Yes—even 
that you’re never going to tell me. I wonder—I 


99 





wonder 
“Yes? What do you wonder?” 
“I was just thinking—I wonder if they haven’t 
done it, after all.” 
*T don’t understand.” 


> 


“I wonder,”’ she went on, still slowly, and in a 
voice ci reflection, “I wonder who has been talking 
about me to you, after all? Isn’t that it?” 

**Not at ” he began, but checked himself and 
substituted another form of denial. “Nothing is 
fi ats 

**Are you sure?” 

“Why, yes.” 

“How curious!” she said. 

“Why?” 





ALICE ADAMS 383 


“Because all evening you’ve been so utterly 
different.”’ 

“But in this weather HE 

“No. That wouldn’t make you afraid to look at 
me all evening!” 

“But I did lock at you. Often.” 

“No. Not really a look.” 

“But I’m looking at you now.” 

**Yes—in the dark!” she said. “‘No—the weather 


might make you even quieter than usual, but it 





wouldn’t strike you so nearly dumb. No—and it 
wouldn’t make you seem to be under such a strain— 
as if you thought only of escape!” 

“But I haven’t——” 

“Vou shouldn’t,” sheinterrupted,gently. “There’s 
nothing you have to escape from, you know. You 
aren’t committed to—to this friendship.” 

” he began, but did not 





*“T’m sorry you think 
complete the fragment. 

She took it up. ‘“‘You’re sorry I think you’re so 
different, you mean to say, don’t you? Never mind: 
that’s what you did mean to say, but you couldn’t 
finish it because you’re not good at deceiving.” 

“Oh, no,” he protested, feebly. “I’m not de- 


93 





ceiving. “I’m 


384 ALICE ADAMS 


*“Never mind,” she said again. “You’re sorry I 
think you’re so different—and all in one day—since 
last night. Yes, your voice sounds sorry, too. It 
sounds sorrier than it would just because of my 
thinking something you could change my mind about 
an a minute—so it means you're sorry you are dif- 
ferent.” 

*“No—I os 

But disregarding the faint denial, “Never mind,” 





she said. “‘Do you remember one night when you 
told me that nothing anybody else could do would 
ever keep you from coming here? That if you—if 
you left me—it would be because I drove you away 
myself?” 

“Yes,” he said, huskily. “It was true.” 

*‘Are you sure?” 

“Indeed I am,”’ he answered in a low voice, but 
with conviction. 

“Then ” She paused. “‘ Well—but I haven’t 
driven you away.” 

**No.” 

**And yet you’ve gone,” she said, quietly. 





“Do I seem so stupid as all that?” 
“You know what I mean.” She leaned back in 


her chair again, and her hands, inactive for once, lay 


ALICE ADAMS 385 


motionless in her lap. When she spoke it was in a 
rueful whisper: 

“T wonder if I have driven you away?”’ 

““You’ve done nothing—nothing at all,” he said. 





*T wonder *? she said oncemore, but shestopped. 
In her mind she was going back over their time to- 
gether since the first meeting—fragments of talk, 
moments of silence, little things of no importance, 
little things that might be important; moonshine, 
sunshine, starlight; and her thoughts zigzagged 
among the jumbling memories; but, as if she made 
for herself a picture of all these fragments, throwing 
them upon the canvas haphazard, she saw them all 
just touched with the one tainting quality that gave 
them coherence, the faint, false haze she had put 
over this friendship by her own pretendings. And, 
if this terrible dinner, or anything, or everything, 
had shown that saffron tint in its true colour to the 
man at her side, last night almost a lover, then she 
had indeed of herself driven him away, and might 
well feel that she was lost. 

“Do you know?” she said, suddenly, in a clear, 
loud voice. “I have the strangest feeling. I feel as 
if I were going to be with you only about five minutes 


1°? 


more in all the rest of my life 


386 ALICE ADAMS 


“Why, no,” he said. “Of course I’m coming to 
see you—often. J——” 

“No,” she interrupted. ‘“‘I’ve never had a feeling 
like this before. It’s—it’s just so; that’s all! You’re 
going—why, you’re never coming here again!”’ She 
stood up, abruptly, beginning to tremble all over. 
““Why, it’s finished, isn’t it?” she said, and her 
trembling was manifest now in her voice. “Why, 
it’s all over, isn’t it? Why, yes!” 

He had risen as she did. “I’m afraid you’re aw- 
fully tired and nervous,” he said. “I really ought to 
be going.” 

“Yes, of course you ought,” she cried, despairingly. 
“There’s nothing else for you to do. When any- 
thing’s spoiled, people can’t do anything but run 
away from it. So good-bye!”’ 

** At least,”’ he returned, huskily, “we'll only—only 
say good-night.” 

Then, as moving to go, he stumbled upon the 
veranda steps, “Your hat!” she cried. “I'd like to 
keep it for a souvenir, but I’m afraid you need it!” 

She ran into the hall and brought his straw hat 
from the chair where he had left it. ‘You poor 
thing!”’ she said, with quavering laughter. ‘Don’t 
you know you can’t go without your hat?” 


ALICE ADAMS 387 


Then, as they faced each other for the short moment 
which both of them knew would be the last of all 
their veranda moments, Alice’s broken laughter 
grew louder. ‘“‘What a thing to say!” she cried. 
“What a romantic parting—talking about hais !” 

Her laughter continued as he turned away, but 
other sounds came from within the house, clearly 
audible with the opening of a door upstairs—a long 
and wailing cry of lamentation in the voice of Mrs. 
Adams. Russell paused at the steps, uncertain, but 
Alice waved to him to go on. 

“Oh, don’t bother,” she said. ‘‘ We have lots of 
that in this funny little old house! Good-bye!” 

And as he went down the steps, she ran back inte 
the house and closed the door heavily behind her. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


ER mother’s wailing could still be heard 
H from overhead, though more faintly; and 
old Charley Lohr was coming down the 

stairs alone. 

He looked at Alice compassionately. “I was just 
comin’ to suggest maybe you'd excuse yourself from 
your company,” he said. “Your mother was bound 
not to disturb you, and tried her best to keep you 
from hearin’ how she’s takin’ on, but I thought 
probably you better see to her.” 

“Ves, Pll come. What’s the matter?” 

“Well,” he said, “J only stepped over to offer my 
sympathy and services, as it were. J thought of 
course you folks knew all about it. Fact is, it was 
in the evening paper—just a little bit of an item on 
the back page, of course.” 

“What is it?” 

He coughed. ‘Well, it ain’t anything so terrible,”’ 
he said. ‘‘Fact is, your brother Walter’s got in a 


little trouble—well, I suppose you might call it 
388 


ALICE ADAMS 389 


quite a good deal of trouble. Fact is, he’s quite 
considerable short in his accounts down at Lamb 
and Company.” 

Alice ran up the stairs and into her father’s room, 
where Mrs. Adams threw herself into her daughter’s 
arms. “Is he gone?” she sobbed. ‘“‘He didn’t hear 
me, did he? I tried so hard * 

Alice patted the heaving shoulders her arms en- 





closed. “No,no,’ shesaid. “He didn’t hear you— 


it wouldn’t have mattered—he doesn’t matter any- 


33 


way. | 
*Oh, poor Walter!” The mother cried. ‘Oh, 
the poor boy! Poor, poor Walter! Poor, poor, poor, 


33 





poor 

**Hush, dear, hush!” Alice tried to soothe her, but 
the lament could not be abated, and from the eather 
side of the room a repetition in a different spirit was 
as continuous. Adams paced furiously there, pound- 
ing his fist into his left palm as he strode. “The 
dang boy!” he said. “Dang little fool! Dang idiot! 
Dang fool!. Whyn’t he ¢ell me, the dang little fool?” 

“He did!” Mrs. Adams sobbed. “He did tell 
you, and you wouldn’t give it to him.” 

**He did, did he?”” Adams shouted ather. ‘“‘What 
he begged me for was money to run away with! He 


390 ALICE ADAMS 
never dreamed of putting back what he took. What 


the dangnation you talking about—accusing me!” 
“He needed it,” she said. ‘“‘He needed it to run 
away with! How could he expect to live, after he 


gol away, if he didn’t have a little money? Oh, poor, 


33 





poor, poor Walter! Poor, poor, poor 

She went back to this repetition; and Adams went 
back to his own, then paused, seeing his old friend 
standing in the hallway outside the open door. 

*‘ Ah—T’ll just be goin’, I guess, Virgil,’ Lohr said. 
“*T don’t see as there’s any use my tryin’ to say any 
more. I'll do anything you want me to, you under 
stand.” 

“Wait a minute,” Adams said, and, groaning, 
came and went down the stairs with him. “You 
say you didn’t see the old man at all?” 

“No, I don’t know a thing about what he’s going 
to do,”’ Lohr said, as they reached the lower floor. 
“Not a thing. But look here, Virgil, I don’t see as 
this calls for you and your wife to take on so hard 
about—anyhow not as hard as the way you’ve 
started.” 

“No,” Adams gulped. “It always seems that way 
to the other party that’s only looking on!” 

“Oh, well, I know that, of course,” old Charley 


ALICE ADAMS 391 


returned, svothingly. “But look here, Virgil: they 
may not catch the boy; they didn’t even seem to be 
sure what train he made, and if they do get him, why, 


> 





the ole man might decide not to prosecute if : 

“Him?” Adams cried, interrupting. ‘“‘Him not 
prosecute? Why, that’s what he’s been waiting for, 
all along! He thinks my boy and me both cheated 
him! Why, he was just letting Walter walk into a 
trap! Didn’t you say they’d been suspecting him 
for some time back? Didn’t you say they’d been 
watching him and were just about fixing to arrest 
him?” 3 

“Yes, I know,” said Lohr; “but you can’t tell, 
especially if you raise the money and pay it back.” 

“Every cent!’’ Adams vociferated. “‘Every last 
penny! I can raise it—I got to raise it! I’m going 
to put a loan on my factory to-morrow. Oh, I'll 
get it for him, you tell him! Every last penny!” 
“Well, ole feller, you just try and get quieted down 


b 


some now.” Charley held out his hand in parting. 
“You and your wife just quiet down some. You 
ain’t the healthiest man in the world, you know, and 
you already been under quite some strain before this 
happened. ‘You want to take care of yourself for the 


sake cf your wife and that sweet little girl upstairs, 


392 ALICE ADAMS 


you know. Now, good-night,”’ he finished, stepping 
out upon the veranda. ‘“‘ You send for me if there’s 
anything I can do.” 

“Do?” Adams. echoed. “There ain’t anything 
anybody can do!”? And then, as his old friend went 
down the path. to the sidewalk, he called after him, 
“You tell him Pll pay him every last cent! Every 
last, dang, dirty penny !” 

He slammed the door and went rapidly up the 
stairs, talking loudly to himself. “‘Every dang, last, 
dirty penny! Thinks everybody in this family wants 
to steal from him, does he? Thinks we’re all yellow, 
does he? I'll show him!” And he came into. his 
own room vociferating, “Every last, dang, dirty 
penny!” 

_ Mrs. Adams had collapsed, and Alice had put her 
upon his bed, where she lay tossing convulsively and 
sobbing, “Oh, poor Walter!” over and over, but after 
a time she varied the sorry tune. “Oh, poor Alice!” 
she moaned, clinging to her daughter’s hand. ‘Oh, 
poor, poor Alice—to have this come on the night of 
your dinner—just when everything seemed to be 


> 





going so well—at last—oh, poor, poor, poor : 
“Hush!” Alice said, sharply. “Don’t say ‘poor 
Alice!’ I’m all right.” 














** “He did tell you,’ Mrs. Adams sobbed, ‘and you 


We 


wouldn't give rt to him. 








ALICE ADAMS 393 


“You must be!” her mother cried, clutching her. 
*“You’ve just got to be! One of us has got to be all 
right—surely God wouldn’t mind just one of us being 
all right—that wouldn’t hurt Him mn 

“Hush, hush, mother! Hush!” 

But Mrs. Adams only clutched her the more 
tightly. “He seemed such a nice young man, dearie! 





He may not see this in the paper—Mr. Lohr said it 
was just a little bit of an item—he may not see it, 
dearie——”’ 

Then her anguish went back to Walter again; 
and to his needs as a fugitive—she had meant to 
repair his underwear, but had postponed doing so, 
and her neglect now appeared to be a detail as lament-. 
able as the calamity itself. She could neither be 
stilled upon it, nor herself exhaust its urgings to self- 
reproach, though she finally took up another theme 
temporarily. Upon an unusually violent outbreak of 
her husband’s, in denunciation of the runaway, she 
cried out faintly that he was cruel; and further 
wearied her broken voice with details of Walter’s 
beauty as a baby, and of his bedtime pieties through- 
out his infancy. 

So the hot night wore on. Three had struck be- 
fore Mrs. Adams was got to bed; and Alice, returning 


394 ALICE ADAMS 


to her own room, could hear her father’s bare feet 
thudding back and forth after that. “Poor papa!” 
she whispered in helpless imitation of her mother. 
“Poor papa! Poormama! Poor Walter! Poor all 
of us!” 

She fell asleep, after a time, while from across the 
hall the bare feet stiil thudded over their changeless 
route; and she woke at seven, hearing Adams pass her 
door, shod. In her wrapper she ran out into the 
hallway and found him descending the stairs. 

“Papa!” 

“Hush,” he ‘said, and looked up at her with 
reddened eyes. “‘Don’t wake your mother.” 

“JT won't,” she whispered. “How about you? 
You haven’t slept any at all!” 

“Yes, I did. I got some sleep. I’m going over 
to the works now. I got to throw some figures to- 
gether to show the bank. Don’t worry: Dll get 
things fixed up. You go back to bed. Good-bye.” 

“Wait!” she bade him sharply. 

“What for?” 

“You've got to have some breakfast.” 

*Don’t want ’ny.” 

*You wait!” shesaid, imperiously,and disappeared 
to return almost at once. “I can cook in my bed- 


ALICE ADAMS 39& 


zoom slippers,” she explained, “but I don’t believe 
I could in my bare feet!”’ 

Descending softly, she made him wait in the 
dining-room until she brought him tcast and eggs and 
coffee. “Eat!” she said. “And Dm going to 
telephone for a taxicab to take you, if you think 
you've really got to go.”’ 

“No, I’m going to walk—I want to walk.” 

She shook her head anxiously. “You don’t look 
able. You’ve walked all night.” 

“No, I didn’t,” he returned. “I tell you I got 


some sleep. I got all I wanted anyhow.” 





“But, papa 

*‘Here!”’ he interrupted, looking up at her suddenly 
and setting down his cup of coffee. “Look here! 
What about this Mr. Russell? I forgot all about 
him. What about him?” 

Her lip trembled a little, but she controlled it be- 
fore she spoke. ‘“‘ Well, what about him, papa?” she 
asked, calmly enough. 

“Well, we could hardly——” Adams _ paused, 
frowning heavily. “We could hardly expect he 
wouldn’t hear something about all this.”’ 

“Yes; of course he’ll hear it, papa.” 


“Well?” 


396 ALICE ADAMS 


“Well, what?” she asked, gently. 

“You don’t think he’d be the—the cheap kind it’d 
make a difference with, of course.” 

“Oh, no; he isn’t cheap. It won’t make any 
difference with him.” 

Adams suffered a profound sigh to escape him. 
*“Well—I’m glad of that, anyway.” 

“The difference,” she explained—‘“the difference 
was made without his hearing anything about 
Walter. He doesn’t know about that yet.” 

‘“Well, what does he know about?” 

“Only,” she said, “‘about me.” 

“What you mean by that, Alice?” he asked, 
helplessly. | 

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s nothing beside the 
real trouble we’re in—T’ll tell you some time. You 
eat your eggs and toast; you can’t keep going on 
just coffee.” : 

“TI can’t eat any eggs and toast,” he objected, 
rising. “I can't.” 

“Then wait till I can bring you something else.” 

“No,” he said, irritably. “I won’t doit! Idon’t 
want any dang food! And look here’— he spoke 
sharply to stop her, as she went toward the telephone 
—“T don’t want any dang taxi, either! You look 


ALICE ADAMS 397 


after your mother when she wakes up. I got to be 
at work !” 

And though she followed him to the front door, 
entreating, he could not be stayed or hindered. He 
went through the quiet morning streets at a rickety, 
rapid gait, swinging his old straw hat in his hands, 
and whispering angrily to himself as he went. His 
grizzled hair, not trimmed for a month, blew back 
from his damp forehead in the warm breeze; his 
reddened eyes stared hard at nothing from under 
blinking lids; and one side of his face twitched start- 
lingly from time to time;—children might have run 
from him, or mocked him. 

When he had come into that fallen quarter his in- 
dustry had partly revived and wholly made odorous, 
a negro woman, leaning upon her whitewashed gate, 
gazed after him and chuckled for the benefit of a 
gossiping friend in the next tiny yard. ‘“‘Oh, good 
Satan! Wha’ssa matter that ole glue man?” 

“Who? Him?” the neighbour inquired. “What 
he do now?” 

“Talkin’ to his ole se!” the first. explained, 
joyously. “Look like gone distracted—ole glue 
man!”’ : 

Adams’s legs had grown more uncertain with his 


$98 ALICE ADAMS 


hard walk, and he stumbled heavily as he crossed the 
baked mud of his broad lot, but cared little for that, 
was almost unaware of it, in fact. Thus his eyes saw 
as little as his body felt, and so he failed to observe 
something that would have given him additional 
light upon an old phrase that already meant quite 
enough for him. 

There are in the wide world people who have never 
learned its meaning; but most are either young or 
beautifully unobservant who remain wholly un- 
aware of the inner poignancies the words convey: 


3° 


“a rain of misfortunes.” It is a boiling rain, seem- 
ingly whimsical in its choice of spots whereon to fall; 
and, so far as mortal eye can tell, neither the just 
nor the unjust may hope to avoid it, or need worry 
themselves by expecting it. It had selected the 
Adams family for its scaldings; no question. 

The glue-works foreman, standing in the doorway 
of the brick shed, observed his employer’s eccentric 
approach, and doubtfully stroked a whiskered chin. 
“Well, they ain’t no putticular use gettin’ so upset 
over it,” he said, as Adams came up. “When a 
thing happens, why, it happens, and that’s-all there 
is to it. When a thing’s so, why, it’s so. All you 
can do about it is think if there’s anything you cau 


ALICE ADAMS 399 


do; and that’s what you better be doin’ with this 
case.” 

Adams halted, and seemed to gape at him. ‘What 
—case?”’ he said, with difficulty. ‘‘ Was it in the 
morning papers, too?” 

“No, it ain’t in no morning papers. My land! It 
don’t need to be in no papers; look at the size of 
it!” 

“The size of what?” 

“Why, great God!”’ the foreman exclaimed. ‘“‘He 
ain’t even seen it. Look! Look yonder!” 

Adams stared vaguely at the man’s outstretched 
hand and pointing forefinger, then turned and saw a 
great sign upon the facade of the big factory building 
across the street. ‘The letters were large enough to 
be read two blocks away. 

“AFTER THE FIFTEENTH OF NEXT MONTH 
THIS BUILDING WILL BE OCCUPIED BY 
THE J. A. LAMB LIQUID GLUE CO. INC.” 

A gray touring-car had just come to rest before the 
. principal entrance of the building, and J. A. Lamb 
himself descended from it. He glanced over toward 
the humble rival of his projected great industry, saw 
his old clerk, and immediately walked across the 
street and the lot to speak to him. 


all 


400 ALICE ADAMS 
“Well, Adams,” he said, in bis husky, cheerful 


voice, “how’s your glue-works?”’ 

Adams uttered an inarticulate sound, and lifted 
the hand that held his hat as if to make a protestive 
gesture, but failed to carry it out; and his arm sank 
limp at his side. The foreman, however, seemed to 
feel that something ought to be said. 


1?? 


“Our glue-works, hell!” he remarked. “I guess 
we won't have no glue-works over here—not very 
long, if we got to compete with the sized thing you 


33 
! 


got over there 

Lamb chuckled. “I kind of had some such 
notion,’ he said. ‘‘You see, Virgil, I couldn’t 
exactly let you walk off with it like swallering a pat 
o butter, now, could I? It didn’t look exactly 
reasonable to expect me to let go like that, now, did 
ie”. 

Adams found a half-choked voice somewhere in his 
throat. ‘‘Do you—would you step into my office a 
minute, Mr. Lamb?” 

“Why, certainly I’m willing to have a little talk 
with you,” the old gentleman said, as he followed his 
former employee indoors, and he added, “I feel a lot 
more like it than I did before I got that up, over 
yonder, Virgil!” 


ALICE ADAMS 4AU1 


Adams threw open the door of the rough room he 
called his office, having as justification for this title 
little more than the fact that he had a telephone 
there and a deal table that served as a desk. “‘Just 
step into the office, please,”’ he said. 

Lamb glanced at the desk, at the kitchen chair 
before it, at the telephone, and at the partition walls 
built of old boards, some covered with ancient paint 
and some merely weatherbeaten, the salvage of a 
house-wrecker; and he smiled broadly. “So these 
are your Offices, are they?” he asked. ‘‘ You expect 
to do quite a business here, I guess, don’t you, 
Virgil?” 

Adams turned upon him a stricken and tortured 
face. ‘“‘Have you seen Charley Lohr since last night, 
Mr. Lamb?” 

“No; I haven’t seen Charley.” 

“Well, I told him to tell you,” Adams began ;— 
*T told him I’d pay you 

““Pay me what you expect to make out o’ glue, 
you mean, Virgil?” 





“No,” Adams said, swallowing. “I mean what 
my boy owes you. That’s what I told Charley to 
tell you. I told him to tell you I’d pay you every 
last——”’ 





402 ALICE ADAMS 


“Well, well!’ the old gentleman interrupted, 
testily. “I don’t know anything about that.” 

“I’m expecting to pay you,” Adams went on, 
swallowing again, painfully. ‘I was expecting to 
do it out of a loan I thought I could get on my glue- 
works.” 

The old gentleman lifted his frosted eyebrows. 
“Oh, out o’ the glue-works? You expected to raise 
money on the glue-works, did you?” 

At that, Adams’s agitation increased prodigiously. 
“How'd you think I expected to pay you?” he said. 
“Did you think I expected to get money on my own 
old bones?” He slapped himself harshly upon the 
chest and legs. “Do you think a bank’ll lend 
money on a man’s ribs and his broken-down old 
knee-bones? They won’t do it! You got to have 
some business prospects to show ’em, if you haven’t 
got any property nor securities; and what business 
prospects have I got now, with that sign of yours 
up over yonder? Why, you don’t need to make an 
ounce 0’ glue; your sign’s fixed me without your doing 
another lick! That’s all you had to do; just put 


93 





your sign up! You needn’t to 
“Just let me tell you something, Virgil Adams,” 
the old man interrupted, harshly. “I got just 


ALICE ADAMS 403 


one right important thing to tell you before we talk 
any further business, and that’s this: there’s some 
few men in this town made their money in off-colour 
ways, but there aren’t many; and those there are 
have had to be a darn sight slicker than you know 
how to be, or ever will know how to be! Yes, sir, 
and they none of them had the little gumption to 
try to make it out of a man that had the spirit not 
to let ’em, and the strength not to let ’em! I know 
what you thought. ‘Here,’ you said to yourself, 
-‘there’s this ole fool J. A. Lamb; he’s kind of worn out 
and in his second childhood like; I can put it over on 


9°99 





him, without his ever 

“IT did not!’”? Adams shouted. “A great deal you 
know about my feelings and all what I said to my- 
self! There’s one thing I want to tell you, and that’s 
what I’m saying to myself now, and what my feelings 
are this minute!” 

He struck the table a great blow with his thin fist, 
and shook the damaged knuckles in the air. “I just 
want to tell you, whatever I did feel, I don’t feel 
mean any more; not to-day, I don’t. There’s a 
meaner man in this world than J am, Mr. Lamb!’’ 

_ “Oh, so you feel better about yourself to-day, do 
you, Virgil?” 


~ 


4.04 ALICE ADAMS 


“You bet Ido! You worked till you got me where 
you want me; and I wouldn’t do that to another man, 





no matter what he did to me! I wouldn’t % 

“What you talkin’ about! How’ve I ‘got you 
where I want you?’”’ 

*Ain’t it plain enough?”? Adams cried. ‘You 
even got me where I can’t raise the money to pay 
back what my boy owes you! Do you suppose any- 
body’s fool enough to let me have a cent on this 
business after one look at what you got over there 
across the road?” 

“No, I don’t.” 

“No, you don’t,” Adamsechoed, hoarsely. ‘‘What’s 
more, you knew my house was mortgaged, and 
my——”’ 

“I did not,” Lamb interrupted, angrily. “‘ What 
do I care about your house?” 
~ What's the use your talking like that?” Adams 
cried. ‘‘You got me where I can’t even raise the 
money to pay what my boy owes the company, so’t 
I can’t show any reason to stop the prosecution and 
keep him out the penitentiary. That’s where you 
worked till you got me!” 

_ “What!” Lamb shouted. “ You accuse me of py 


**Accuse you?” What am I telling you?) Do you 





ALICE ADAMS 405 


think I got no eyes?” And Adams hammered the 
tableagain. “Why, youknewthe boy was weak 
“TI did not!” 
‘Listen: you kept him there after you got mad at 





my leaving the way I did. You kept him there 
after you suspected him; and you had him watched; 
you let him go on; just waited to catch him and ruin 
him!” 

“You're crazy!” the old man bellowed. “I didn’t 
know there was anything against the ney till last 
night. You're crazy, I say!” 

Adams looked it. With his hair disordered over 
his haggard forehead and bloodshot eyes; with his 
bruised hands pounding the table and flying in a 
hundred wild and absurd gestures, while his feet 
shuffled constantly to preserve his balance upon 
staggering legs, he was the picture of a man with a 
mind gone to rags. 

“Maybe I am crazy!” he cried, his voice cattag 
and. quavering. “Maybe I am, but I wouldn’t 
stand there and taunt a man with it if ’d done to 
him what you’ve done to me! Just look at me: I 
worked all my life for you, and what I did when I quit 
never harmed you—it didn’t make two cents’ worth 
o’ difference in your life and it looked like it’d mean 


406 ALICE ADAMS 


all the difference in the world to my family—and 
now look what you’ve done to me for it! I tell you, 
Mr. Lamb, there never was a man looked up to 
another man the way I looked up to you the whole 
o’ my life, but I don’t look up to you any more! 
You think you got a fine day of it now, riding up in 
your automobile to look at that sign—and then over 
here at my poor little works that you’ve ruined. 
But listen to me just this one last time!” The 
cracking voice broke into falsetto, and the gesticu- 
lating hands fluttered uncontrollably. “Just you 
! he panted. “You think I did you a bad 
turn, and now you got me ruined for it, and you got 


listen 


my works ruined, and my family ruined; and if any- 
body’d ’a’ told me this time last year I'd eversay such 
a thing to you Id called him a dang liar, but I do say 
it: I say you’ve acted toward me like—like a—a 
doggone mean—man!” 

His voice, exhausted, like his body, was just able 
to do him this final service; then he sank, crumpled, 
into the chair by the table, his chin down hard upon 
his chest. 

**T tell you, you’re crazy!’ Lamb said again. “‘I 
never in the world: ” But he checked himself, 
staring in sudden perplexity at his accuser. “‘Look 





ALICE ADAMS 40% 


here!” he said. “ What’s the matter of you? Have 
you got another of those——?” He put his hand 
upon Adams’s shoulder,which jerked feebly under the 
touch. 

The old man went to the door and called to the 
foreman. 

“Here!” ke said. ‘“‘Run and tell my chauffeur to 
bring my car over here. Tell him to drive right up 
over the sidewalk and across the lot. Tell him to 
hurry!” 

So, it happened, the great J. A. Lamb a second time 
brought his former clerk home, stricken and almost 


inanimate. 


CHAPTER XXIV 
BOUT five o'clock that afternoon, the old 


gentleman came back to Adams’s house: 

and when Alice opened the door, he nodded, 
walked into the “living-room” without speaking; 
then stood frowning as if he hesitated to decide some 
perplexing question. 

“Well, how is he now?”’ he asked, finally. 

“The doctor was here again a little while ago; he 
thinks papa’s coming through it. He’s pretty sure 
he will.” 

**Something like the way it was last spring?” 

“Yes.” 

**Not a bit of sense to it!”’ Lamb said, gruffly. 
“When he was getting well the other time the doc- 
tor told me it wasn’t a regular stroke, so to speak— 
this ‘cerebral effusion’ thing. Said there wasn’t any 
particular reason for your father to expect he’d ever 
have another attack, if he’d take a little care of him- 
self. Said he could consider himself well as anybody 


else long as he did that.” 
408 


ALICE ADAMS 409 


“Yes. But he didn’t do it!” 

Lamb nodded, sighed aloud, and crossed the room 
to a chair. “I guess not,” he said, as he sat down. 
‘Bustin’ his health up over his glue-works, I expect.” 

Ves,’ 

“TI guess so; I guess so.” Then he looked up at 
her with a glimmer of anxiety in his eyes. “Has 
he came to yet?” 

“Yos. He’s talked a little. His mind’s clear: he 
spoke to mama and me—and to Miss Perry.” Alice 
laughed sadly. ‘‘We were lucky enough to get her 
back, but papa didn’t seem to think it was lucky. 
When he recognized her he said, ‘Oh, my goodness, 
*tisn’t you; is it!” 

“Well, that’s a good sign, if he’s getting a little 
cross. Did he—did he happen to say anything— 
for instance, about me?” 

This question, awkwardly delivered, had the effect 
of removing the girl’s pallor; rosy timts came 
quickly upon her cheeks. “‘He—yes, he did,” she 
said. “Naturally,he’s troubled about—about m 
She stopped. 





**About your brother, maybe?” 
“Yes, about making up the——”’ 
“Here, now,’ Lamb said, uncomfortably, as she 


410 ALICE ADAMS 


stopped again. “Listen, young lady; let’s don’t talk 
about that just yet. I want to ask you: you under- 
stand all about this glue business, I expect, don’t 
you?”’ 





“Tm not sure. I only know ne | 

“Let me tell you,” he interrupted, impatiently. 
“Tl tell you all about it in two words: . The process 
belonged to me, and your father up and walked off 
with it; there’s no getting around that much, any- 
how.”’ 

“Isn’t there?” Alice stared at him. “I think 
you're mistaken, Mr. Lamb. Didn’t papa improve it 
so that it virtually belonged to him?” 

There was a spark in the old blue eyes at this. 


“What?” he cried. “Is that the way he got around 


33 





it? . Why, in all my life I never heard of such a 
But he left the sentence unfinished; the testiness 
went out of his husky voice and the anger out of his 
eyes. ‘Well, I expect maybe that was the way of 
it,” he said. ‘‘Anyhow, it’s right for you to stand 
up for your father; and if you think he had a right 
to it 

“But he did!” she cried. 

“TI expect so,” the old man returned, pacifically. 





“I expect so, probably. Anyhow, it’s a question 


ALICE ADAMS 411 


that’s neither here nor there, right now. What I was 
thinking of saying—well, did your father happen te 
let out that he and I had words this morning?” 

**No.” 

“Well, we did.’ He sighed and shook his head. 
“Your father—well, he used some pretty hard 
expressions toward me, young lady. They weren't 
so, I’m glad to say, but he used ’em to me, and the 
worst of it was he believed ’em. Well, I been think- 
ing it over, and I thought I’d just have a kind of 
little talk with you to set matters straight, so to 
speak.” 

“Yes, Mr. Lamb.” 

“For instance,” he said, “‘it’s like this. Now, I 
hope you won’t think I mean any indelicacy, but you 
take your brother’s case, since we got to mention it, 
why, your father had the whole thing worked out in 
his mind about as wrong as anybody ever got any- 
thing. If I’d acted the way your father thought I did 
about that, why, somebody just ought to take me 
out and shoot me! Do you know what that man 
thought?” | 

“T’m not sure.” 

He frowned at her, and asked, “Well, what do you 
think about it?” | 


412 ALICE ADAMS 


“I don’t know,” ‘she said. “I don’t believe I 
think anything at all about anything to-day.” 

“Well, well,’ he returned; “I expect not; I 
expect not. You kind of look to me as if you ought 
to be in bed yourself, young lady.” 

“Oh, no.” 

“I guess you mean ‘Oh, yes’; and I won’t keep you 
long, but there’s something we got to get fixed up, 
and I'd rather talk to you than I would to your 
mother, because you’re a smart girl and always 
friendly; and I want to be sure I’m understood. 
Now, listen.”’ 

**T will,’ Alice promised, smiling faintly. 

“I never even hardly noticed your brother was 
still working for me,” he explained, earnestly. “I 
never thought anything about it. My sons sort of 
tried to tease me about the way your father—about 
his taking up this glue business, so to speak—and 
one day Albert, Junior, asked me if I felt all right 
about your brother’s staying there after that, and I 
told him—well, I just asked him to shut up. If the 
boy wanted to stay there, I didn’t consider it my 
business to send him away on account of any feeling 
I had toward his father; not as long as he did his 
work right—and the report showed he did. Well, 


ALICE ADAMS 413 


as it happens, it looks now as if he stayed because 
he had to; he couldn’t quit because he’d ’a’ been — 
found out if he did. Well, he’d been covering up his 
shortage for a considerable time—and do you know 
what your father practically charged me with about 
that?” 

“No, Mr. Lamb.” 

In his resentment, the old gentleman’s ruddy face 
became ruddier and his husky voice huskier. 
“Thinks I kept the boy there because I suspected 
him! Thinks I did it to get even with him! Do 
I look to you like a man that’d do such a thing?” 

“No,” she said, gently. “I don’t think you 
would.” 

“No!” he exclaimed. “Nor he wouldn’t think so 
if he was himself; he’s known me too long. But he 
must been sort of brooding over this whole business— 
I mean before Walter’s trouble—he must been taking 
it to heart pretty hard for some time back. He 
thought I didn’t think much of him any more—and I 
expect he maybe wondered some what I was going 
to do—and there’s nothing worse’n that state of mind 
to make a man suspicious of all kinds of meanness. 
Well, he practically stood up there and accused me 
to my face of fixing things so’t he couldn’t ever 


414 ALICE ADAMS 


raise the money to settle for Walter and ask us not to 
prosecute. That’s the state of mind your father’s 
brooding got him into, young lady—charging me 
with a trick like that!”’ 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you’d never 


bb] 





The old man slapped his sturdy knee, angrily. 
“Why, that dang fool of a Virgil Adams!” he ex- 
claimed. “‘He wouldn’t even give me a chance to 
talk; and he got me so mad I couldn’t hardly talk, 
anyway! He might ’a’ known from the first I 
wasn’t going to let. him walk in and beat me out of 
my own-—that is, he might ’a’ known I wouldn’t 
let him get ahead of me in a business matter—not 
with my boys twitting me about it every few minutes! 
But to talk to me the way he did this morning—well, 
he was out of his head; that’s all! Now; wait just a 
minute,’ he interposed, as she seemed about to 
speak. “In the first place, we aren’t going to push 
this case against your brother. I believe in the law, 
all right, and business men got to protect them- 
selves; but in a case like this, where restitution’s made 
by the family, why, I expect it’s just as well some- 
times to use a little influence and let matters drop. 
Of course your brother’ll have to keep out o’ this 
state; that’s all.” 


ALICE ADAMS 415 





**But—you said ” she faltered. 

“Yes. What'd I say?” 

“You said, ‘where restitution’s made by the 
family.’ That’s what seemed to trouble papa so 


be 7 





terribly, because—because restitution couldn’t 

‘“Why, yes, it could. That’s what I’m here to 
talk to you about.” 

**T don’t see——” 

“T’m going to fell you, ain’t I?” he said, gruffly. 
Just hold your horses a minute, please.” He 
coughed, rose from his chair, walked up and down the 
room, then halted before her. ‘It’s like this,” he 
said. ‘After I brought) your father home, this 
morning, there was one of the things he told me, 
when he was going for me, over yonder—it kind of 
stuck in my craw. It was something about all this 
glue controversy not meaning anything to me in 
particular, and meaning a whole heap to him and his 
family. Well, he was wrong about that two ways. 
The first one was, it did mean a good deal to me to 
have him go back on me after so many years. I 
don’t need to say any more about it, except just to 
tell you it meant quite a little more to me than you’d 
think, maybe. The other way he was wrong is, 
that how much a thing means to one man and how 


416 ALICE ADAMS 
little it means to another ain’t the right way to look 


at a business matter.” 

“1 suppose it isn’t, Mr. Lamb.” 

“No,” he said. “It isn’t. It’s not the right way 
to look at anything. Yes, and your father knows it 
as well as I do, when he’s in his right mind; and I 
expect that’s one of the reasons he got so mad at 
me—but anyhow, I couldn’t help thinking about how 
much all this thing had maybe meant to him;—as I 
say, it kind of stuck in my craw. I want you to tell 
him something from me, and I want you to go and 
tell him right off, if he’s able and willing to listen. 
You tell him I got kind of a notion he was pushed into 
this thing by circumstances, and tell him I’ve lived 
long enough to know that circumstances can beat the 
best of us—you tell him I said ‘the best of us.’ Tell 
him I haven’t got a bit of feeling against him—not 
any more—and tell him I came here to ask him not to 
have any against me.” 

“Yes, Mr. Lamb.”’ 

“Tell him Isaid 
and Alice was surprised, in a dull and tired way, when 





*”” 'Theold man paused abruptly 


she saw that his lips had begun to twitch and his eye- 
lids to blink; but he recovered himself almost at once, 
and continued: ‘“‘I want him to remember, ‘Forgive 


ALICE ADAMS 417 


us our transgressions, as we forgive those that 
transgress against us’; and if he and I been trans- 
gressing against each other, why, tell him I think 
it’s time we quit such foolishness!”’ 

He coughed again, smiled heartily upon her, and 
walked toward the door; then turned back to her 
with an exclamation: ‘‘ Well, if I ain’t an old fool!” 

“What is it?” she asked. 

“Why, I forgot what we were just talking about! 
Your father wants to settle for Walter’s deficit. 
Tell him we'll be glad to accept it; but of course we 
don’t expect him to clean the matter up until he’s 
able to talk business again.” 

Alice stared at him blankly enough for him to 
perceive that further explanations were necessary. 
**Tt’s like this,” he said. ‘“‘ You see, if your father 
decided to keep his works going over yonder, I don’t 
say but he might give us some little competition for 
a time, ’specially as he’s got the start on us and 
about ready for the market. ‘Then I was figuring we 
could use his plant—it’s small, but it’d be to our bene- 
fit to have the use of it—and he’s got a lease on that 
big lot; it may come in handy for us if we want to 
expand some. Well, I’d prefer to make a deal with 
him as quietly as possible—no good in every Tom, 


418 ALICE ADAMS 


Dick and Harry hearing about things like this—but 
I figured he could sell out to me for a little something 
more’n enough to cover the mortgage he put on this 
house, and Walter’s deficit, too—that don’t amount 
to much in dollars and cents.. The way I figure it, 
I could offer him about ninety-three hundred dollars 
as a total—or say ninety-three hundred and fifty— 
and if he feels like accepting, why, Pll send a confi- 
dential man up here with the papers soon’s your 
father’s able to look ’em over. You tell him, will 
you, and ask him if he sees his way to accepting that 
figure?”’ | 

*“Yes,”’ Alice said; and now her own lips twitched, 
while her eyes filled so that she saw but a blurred 
image of the old man, who held out his hand in part- 
ing. “I'll tell him. Thank you.” 

He shook her hand hastily. ‘“‘ Well, let’s just keep 
it kind of quiet,” he said, at the door. ‘“‘No good in 
every Tom, Dick and Harry knowing all what goes on 
in town! You telephone me when your papa’s ready 
to go over the papers—and call me up at my house 
to-night, will you? Let me hear how he’s feeling?”’ 

“T will,” she said, and through her grateful tears 
gave him a smile almost radiant. “‘He’ll be better, 


Mr. Lamb. We all will.” 


CHAPTER XXV 


NE morning, that autumn, Mrs. Adams came 
into Alice’s room, and found her completing 
a sober toilet for the street; moreover, the 
expression revealed in her mirror was harmonious 
with the business-like severity of her attire. “What 
makes you look so cross, dearie?”’ the mother asked. 
“Couldn’t you find anything nicer to wear than that 
plain old dark dress?” 
“T don’t believe I’m cross,” the girl said, absently. 
“T believe I’m just thinking. Isn’t it about time?” 
“Time for what?” 
“Time for thinking—for me, I mean?” 
Disregarding this, Mrs. Adams looked her over 
thoughtfully. “I can’t see why you don’t wear more 
colour,” she said. “At your age it’s becoming and 
proper, too. Anyhow, when you're going on the 
street, I think you ought to look just as gay and 
lively as you can manage. You want to show ‘em 
you’ve got some spunk!” 


“How do you mean, mama?” 
419 


420 ALICE ADAMS 


“T mean about Walter’s running away and the 
mess your father made of his business. It would help 
to show ’em you’re holding up your head just the 
same.” 

“Show whom!” 

‘All these other girls that si 

“Not I!” Alice laughed shortly, shaking her 
head. “I’ve quit dressing at them, and if they saw 
me they wouldn’t think what you want ’’emto. It’s 


funny; but we don’t often make people think what 





we want ’em to, mama. You do thus and so; and 
you tell yourself, “Now, seeing me do thus and so, 
people will naturally think this and that’; but they 
don’t. They think something else—usually just 
what you don’t want ’em to. I suppose about the 
only good in pretending is the fun we get out of 
fooling ourselves that we fool somebody.” 

“Well, but it wouldn’t be pretending. You ought 
to let people see you’re still holding your head up 
because you are. You wouldn’t want that Mildred 
Palmer to think you’re cast down about—well, you 
know you wouldn’t want her not to think you’re 
holding your head up, would you?” 

“She wouldn’t know whether I am or not, mama.” 


Alice bit her lip, then smiled faintly as sha said: 


ALICE ADAMS 42] 


“ Anyhow, I’m not thinking about my head in that 
way—not this morning, I’m not.” 

Mrs. Adams dropped the subject casually. ‘“‘Are 
you going down-town?” she inquired. 

“Yes.” 

“What for?” 

** Just something I want to see about. I'll tell you 
when I come back. Anything you want me to do?” 

“No; I guess not to-day. I thought you might 
look for a rug, but I’d rather go with you to select it. 
We'll have to get a new rug for your father’s room, 
I expect.” 

“Ym glad you think so, mama. I don’t suppose 
he’s ever even noticed it, but that old rug of his— 
well, really!” 

“T didn’t mean for him,” her mother explained, 
thoughtfully. “No; he don’t mind it, and he’d 
likely make a fuss if we changed it on his account. 
No; what I meant—we'll have to put your father in 
Walter’s room. He won’t mind, I don’t expect—not 
much.” 

“No, I suppose not,” Alice agreed, rather sadly. 
“JT heard the bell awhile ago. Was it somebody 
about that?” 

“Yes; just before I came upstairs. Mrs. Lohr gave 


422 ALICE ADAMS 


him a note to me, and he was really a very pleasant: 
looking young man. A very pleasant-looking young 
man,’ Mrs. Adams repeated with increased anima- 
tion and a thoughtful glance at her daughter. ‘“‘He’s 
a Mr. Will Dickson; he has a first-rate position 
with the gas works, Mrs. Lohr says, and he’s fully 
able to afford a nice room. So if you and I double 
up in here, then with that young married couple in 
my room, and this Mr. Dickson in your father’s, we'll 
just about have things settled. I thought maybe I 
could make one more place at table, too, so that with 
the other people from outside we'd be serving eleven 
altogether. You see if I have to pay this cook twelve 
dollars a week—it can’t be helped, I guess—well, one 
more would certainly help toward a profit. Of 
course it’s a terribly worrying thing to see how we 
will come out. Don’t you suppose we could squeeze 
in one more?”’ 

‘I suppose it could be managed; yes.” 

Mrs. Adams brightened. “I’m sure it'll’ be 
pleasant having that young married couple in the 
house—and especially this Mr. Will Dickson. He 
seemed very much of a gentleman, and anxious to get 
settled in good surroundings. I was very favour- 
ably impressed with him in every way; and he ex- 


ALICE ADAMS 423 


plained to me about his name; it seems it isn’t 
William, it’s just ‘Will’; his parents had him chris- 
tened that way. It’s curious.’ She paused, and 
then, with an effort to seem casual, which veiled 
nothing from her daughter: “It’s quite curious,” 
-she said again. “But it’s rather attractive and 
different, don’t you think?” : 
“Poor mama!” Alice laughed compassionately. 
“Poor mama!” 

“He is, though,” Mrs. Adams maintained. ‘“‘He’s 
very much of a gentleman, unless I’m no judge of 
uppearances; and it'll really be nice to have him 
in the house.” 

“No doubt,” Alice said, as she opened her door 
to depart. “I don’t suppose we'll mind having any 
of ’em as much as we thought we would. Good-bye.” 

But her mother detained her, catching her by the 
arm. “Alice, you do hate it, don’t you!” 

“No,” the girl said, quickly. “There wasn’t any- 
thing else to do.” 

Mrs. Adams became emotional at once: her face 
cried tragedy, and her voice misfortune. ‘‘ There 
might have been something else to do! Oh, Alice, 
you gave your father bad advice when you upheld 
him in taking a miserable little ninety-three hun- 


424, ALICE ADAMS 


dred and fifty from that old wretch! If your father’d 
just had the gumption to hold out, they’d have had 
to pay him anything he asked. If he’d just had the 


bt 





gumption and a little manly courage 
*“Hush!”’ Alice whispered, for her mother’s voice 
grew louder. “Hush! He’ll hear you, mama.” 
“Could he hear me too often?” the embittered 
lady asked. “If he’d listened to me at the right 
time, would we have to be taking in boarders and 
sinking down in the scale at the end of our lives, in- 
stead of gomg up? You were both wrong; we didn’t 
need to be so panicky—that was just what that old 
man wanted: to scare us and buy us out for nothing! 
If your father’d just listened to me then, or if for once 


bb 





in his life he’d just been half a man 

Alice put her hand over her mother’s mouth. 
“You mustn’t! He will hear you!” 

But from the other side of Adams’s closed door his 
voice came querulously. ‘Oh, I hear her, ail right!” 

“You see, mama?’ Alice said, and, as Mrs. 
Adams turned away, weeping, the daughter sighed; 
then went in to speak to her father. 

He was in his old chair by the table, with a pillow 
behind his head, but the crocheted scarf and Mrs. 


Adams’s wrapper swathed him no more; he wore a 


ALICE ADAMS 425 


dressing-gown his wife had bought for him, and was 
smoking his pipe. “‘The old story, is it?” he said, 
as Alice came in. “The same, same old. story! 
Well, well! Has she gone?” 

“Yes, papa.” 

“Got your hat on,” he said. ‘Where you going?” 

“I’m going down-town on an errand of my own. 
Is there anything you want, papa?” 

“Yes, there is.” Hesmiledather. ‘I wish you’d 
sit down a while and talk to me—unless your er- 
rand——”’ 

“No,” she said, taking a chair near him. “I was 
just going down to see about some arrangements I 
was making for myself. There’s no hurry.” 

“What arrangements for yourself, dearie?” 

“T’ll tell you afterwards—after I find out some- 
thing about ’em myself.” 

“All right,” he said, indulgently. “Keep your 
secrets; keep your secrets.”” He paused, drew 
musingly upon his pipe, and shook his head. “Funny 
—the way your mother looks at things! For the 
matter o’ that, everything’s pretty funny, I expect, 
if you stop to think about it. For instance, let her 
say all she likes, but we were pushed right spang to 
the wall, if J. A. Lamb hadn’t taken it into his head 


426 ALICE ADAMS 


to make that offer for the works; and there’s one of 
the things I been thinking about lately, Alice: think- 
ing about how funny they work out.” 

What did you think about it, papa!” 

“Well, P’'ve seen it happen in other people’s lives, 
time and time again; and now it’s happened in curs. 
You think you’re going to be pushed right up against 
the wall; you can’t see any way out, or any hope at 
all; you think you’re gone—and then something you 
never counted on turns up; and, while maybe you 
never do get back to where you used to be, yet some- 
how you: kind of squirm out of being right spang 
against the wall. You keep on going—maybe you 
can’t go much, but you do go a little. See what I 
mean?” 

“Yes. I understand, dear.” 

“Yes, I’m afraid you do,’’ he said. “Too bad! 
You oughtn’t. to understand it at your age. It 
seems to me a good deal as if the Lord really meant 
for the young people to have the good times, and for 
the old to have the troubles; and when anybody as 
young as you has trouble there’s a big mistake 
somewhere.” 

“Oh, no!” she protested. 

But he persisted whimsically in this view of divine 


ALICE ADAMS 427 | 


error: “Yes, it does look a good deal that way. 
But of course we can’t tell; we’re never certain about 
anything—not about anything at all. Sometimes 
I look at it another way, though. Sometimes it 
looks to me as if a body’s troubles cameon him mainly 
because he hadn’t had sense enough to know how not 
to have any—as if his troubles were kind of like a 
boy’s getting kept in after school by the teacher, to 
give him discipline, or something or other. But, my, 
my! We don’t learn easy!” He chuckled mourn- 
fully. ‘Not to learn how to live till we’re about 
ready to die, it certainly seems to me dang tough! se 

“Then I wouldn’t brood on such a notion, papa,” 
she said. 

*“‘*Brood?’ No!’ he returned. “J just kind o’ 
mull it over.” Ae chuckled again, sighed, and 
then, not looking at her, he said, “That Mr. Russell 
—your mother tells me he hasn’t been here again— 
not since——”’ 

“No,” she said, quietly, as Adams paused. “He 
never came again.” 

“Well, but maybe——” 

“No,” she said. “‘There isn’t any ‘maybe.’ I 
told him good-bye that night, papa. It was before 
he knew about Walter—I told you.” 


428 ALICE ADAMS 


Well, well,” Adams said. ‘“‘Young people are 
entitled to their own ‘privacy ; I don’t want to pry.” 
He emptied his pipe into a chipped saucer on the 
table beside him, laid the pipe aside, and reverted to a 
former topic. “Speaking of dying——” 

Well, but we weren’t!” Alice protested. 

“Yes, about not knowing how to live till you’re 
through living—and then maybe not!” he said, 
chuckling at his own determined pessimism. ‘I see 
I’m pretty old because I talk this way—I remembe. 
my grandmother saying things a good deal like all 
what I’m saying now; I used to hear her at it when I 
was a young fellow—she was a right gloomy old 
lady, I remember. Well, anyhow, it reminds me: I 
want to get on my feet again as soon as I can; I got 
to look around and find something to go into.” 

Alice shook her head gently. “But, papa, he told 


3? 





you 

“Never mind throwing that dang doctor up at 
me!’? Adams interrupted, peevishly. “He said I’d 
be good for some kind of light job—if I could find just 
the right thing. ‘Where there wouldn’t be either 
any physical or mental strain,’ he said. Well, I 
got to find something like that. Anyway, I'll feel 
better if I can just get out looking for it.” 


ALICE ADAMS 429 


“But, papa, P’m afraid you won’t find it, and you’ll 
be disappointed.” 

“Well, I want to hunt around and see, anyhow.” 

Alice patted his hand. ‘You must just be con- 
tented, papa. Everything’s going to be all right, and 
you mustn’t get to worrying about doing anything. 
We own this house—it’s all clear—and you’ve taken 
care of mama and me all our lives; now it’s our turn.”’ 

“No, sir!” he said, querulously. “I don’t like the 
idea of being the landlady’s husband around a board- 
ing-house; it goes against my gizzard. I know: 
makes out the bills for his wife Sunday mornings— 
works with a screw-driver on somebody’s bureau 
drawer sometimes—’tends the furnace maybe—one 
the boarders gives him a cigar now and then. That’s 
a fine life to look forward to! No, sir; I don’t want 
to finish as a landlady’s husband!” 
_ Alice looked grave; for she knew the sketch was 
but too accurately prophetic in every probability. 
“But, papa,” she said, to console him, “‘don’t you 
_ think maybe there isn’t such a thing as a ‘finish,’ 
after all! You say perhaps we don’t learn to live 
till we die—but maybe that’s how it is after we die, 
too—just learning some more, the way we do here, 
and maybe through trouble again, even after that.” 


4380 ALICE ADAMS 


“Oh, it might be,” he sighed. ‘“‘I expect so.” 

“Well, then,” she said, ‘‘what’s the use of talking 
about a ‘finish?’ We do keep looking ahead to 
things as if they’d finish something, but when we get 
to them, they don’t finish anything. They’re just 
part of going on. J’ll tell you—I looked ahead all 
summer to something I was afraid of, and I said to 
myself, “Well, if that happens, I’m finished!’ But 
it wasn’t so, papa. It did happen, and nothing’s 


+9 





finished; I’m going on, just the same—only 
She stopped and blushed. 

“Only what?”’ he asked. 

“Well 
up, and, standing before him, caught both his hands 


” She blushed more deeply, then jumped 





in hers. “Well, don’t you think, since we do have 
to go on, we ought at least to have learned some 
sense about how to do it?” 

He looked up at her adoringly. 

‘What J think,” he said, and his voice trembled ;— 
*‘T think you’re the smartest girl in the world! I 
wouldn’t trade you for the whole kit-and-boodle of 
’em!”’ 

But as this folly of his threatened to make her 
tearful, she kissed him hastily, and went forth upon 
her errand. ) bead 


ALICE ADAMS 431 


Since the night of the tragic-comic dinner she had 
not seen Russell, nor caught even the remotest chance 
glimpse of him; and it was curious that she should 
encounter him as she went upon such an errand as 
now engaged her. At a corner, not far from. that 
tobacconist’s shop she had just left when he over- 
took her and walked with her for the first time, 
she met him to-day. He turned the corner, coming 
toward her; and they were face to face; whereupon 
that engaging face of Russell’s was instantly red- 
dened, but Alice’s remained serene. 

She stopped short, though; and so did he; then she 
smiled brightly as she put out her hand. 

“Why, Mr. Russell!’ 

“T’m so—I’m so glad to have this—this chance,” 
he stammered. “I’ve wanted to tell you—it’s just 
that going into a new undertaking—this business life 
—one doesn’t get to do a great many things he’d like 
to. I hope you'll let me call again some time, if I 
can.” 

“Yes, do!’ she said, cordially, and then, with a 
quick nod, went briskly on. 

She breathed more rapidly, but knew that he 
could not have detected it, and she took some pride 
in herself for the way she had met this little crisis. 


432 ALICE ADAMS 


But to have met it with such easy courage meant 
to her something more reassuring than a momentary 
pride in the serenity she had shown. For she found 
that what she had resolved in her inmost heart was 
now really true: she was “through with all that!’ 

She walked on, but more slowly, for the tobacco- 
nist’s shop was not far from her now—and, beyond it, 
that portal of doom, Frincke’s Business College. 
Already Alice could read the begrimed gilt letters of 
the sign; and although they had spelled destiny 
never with a more painful imminence than just 
then, an old habit of dramatizing herself still pre- 
vailed with her. 

There came into her mind a whimsical comparison 
of her fate with that of the heroine in a French 
romance she had read long ago and remembered well, 
for she had cried over it. The story ended with the 
heroime’s taking the veil after a death blow to love; 
and the final scene again became vivid to Alice, for a 
moment. Again, as when she had read and wept, 
she seemed herself to stand among the great shadows 
in the cathedral nave; smelled the smoky incense on 
the enclosed air, and heard the solemn pulses of the 
organ. She remembered how the novice’s father 
knelt, trembling, beside a pillar of gray stone; how 


ALICE ADAMS 433 
the faithless lover watched and shivered behind the 


statue of a saint; how stifled sobs and outcries were 
heard when the novice came to the altar; and how a 
shaft of light struck through the rose-window, en- 
veloping her in an amber glow. 

It was the vision of a moment only, and for no 
longer than a moment did Alice tell herself that the 
romance provided a prettier way of taking the veil 
than she had chosen, and that a faithless lover, 
shaking with remorse behind a saint’s statue, was a 
greater solace than one left on a street corner pro- 
testing that he’d like to call some time—if he could! 
Her pity for herself vanished more reluctantly; but 
she shook it off and tried to smile at it, and at her 
romantic recollections—at all of them. She had 
something important to think of. 

She passed the tobacconist’s, and before her was 
that dark entrance to the wooden stairway leading up 
to Frincke’s Business College—the very doorway 
she had always looked upon as the end of youth and 
the end of hope. 

How often she had gone by here, hating the dreary 
obscurity of that stairway; how often she had thought 
of this obscurity as something lying in wait to 
obliterate the footsteps of any girl who should 


434 ALICE ADAMS 


ascend into the smoky darkness above! Never had 
she passed without those ominous imaginings of hers: 
pretty girls turning into old maids “taking dictation” 
—old maids of a dozen different types, yet all look- 
ing a little like herself. 

Well, she was here at last! She looked up and 
_ down the street quickly, and then, with a little 
heave of the shoulders, she went bravely in, under 
the sign, and began to climb the wooden steps. 
Half-way up the shadows were heaviest, but after 
that the place began to seem brighter. There was 
an open window overhead somewhere, she found, 


and the steps at the top were gay with sunshine. 


THE END 


AES 


BOOTH TARKINGTON’S 
NOVELS 


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‘SEVENTEEN. Illustrated by Arthur William Brown. 


No one but the creator of Penrod could have portrayed 
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Seventeen. 


PENROD. Illustrated by Gordon Grant. 


This is a picture of ‘a boy’s heart, full of the lovable, hu- 
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folks. It is a finished, exquisite work. 


_PENROD AND SAM. Illustrated by Worth Brehm. 


Like ** Penrod” and “Seventeen,” this book contains 
some remarkable phases of real boyhood and some of the best 
stories of juvenile prankishness that have ever been written. 


THE TURMOIL. [Illustrated by C. E. Chambers. 


Bibbs Sheridan is a dreamy, imaginative youth, who re- 
volts against his father’s plans for him to be a servitor of 
big business. The love of a fine girl turns Bibb’s life from 
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THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA. Frontispiece. 


A story of love and politics,—more especially a picture of 
a country editor’s life in Indiana, but the charm of the book 
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THE FLIRT. Illustrated by Clarence F. Underwood. 


The “ Flirt,’’ the younger of two sisters, breaks one girl’s 
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SISTERS. Frontispiece by Frank Street. 


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POOR, DEAR, MARGARET KIRBY. 


Frontispiece by George Gibbs. 


A collection of delightful stories, including ‘‘ Bridging the 
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JOSSELYN’S WIFE. Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert. 


The story of a beautiful woman who fought a bitter fight for 
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MARTIE, THE UNCONQUERED. 
Illustrated by Charles E. Chambers. 

The triumph of a dauntless spirit over adverse conditions. 
THE HEART OF RACHAEL. 


Frontispiece by Charles E. Chambers. 


An. interesting story of divorce and the problems that come 
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THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE. 


Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert. 


A sympathetic portrayal of the quest of a normal girl, obscure 
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SATURDAY’S CHILD. Frontispiece by F. Graham Cootes. 


Cana girl, born in rather sordid conditions, lift herself through 
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SHORTY McCABE. Illustrated by Francis Vaux Wilson. 

A very humorous story, The hero, an independent and vigorous 
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SIDE-STEPPING WITH SHORTY. 

Iilustrated by Francis Vaux Wilson. 

Twenty skits, presenting people with their foibles, Sympathy 
with human nature and an abounding sense of humor are the requi- 
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SHORTY McCABE ON THE JOB. 
Illustrated by Franeis Vaux Wilson. 

Shorty McCabe reappears with his figures of speech revamped 
tight up to the minute. He aids in the right distribution of a 
“conscience fund,"’ and gives joy to all concerned. 

SHORTY McCABE’S ODD NUMBERS, 
Illustrated by Francis Vaux Wilson. 

These further chronicles of Shorty McCabe tell of his studio for 
physical culture, and of his experiences both on the East side and at 
swell yachting parties. 

TORCHY. Illus, by Geo. Biehm and Jas. Montgomery Flagg. 


A red-headed office boy, overflowing with wit and wisdom pe- 
culiar to the youths reared on the sidewalks of New York, tells the 
story of his experiences. 

TRYING OUT TORCHY. Illustrated by F. Foster Lincoln. 


Torchy is juSt as deliriously funny in these stories as he was in 
the previous book. 


ON WITH TORCHY. Illustrated by F. Foster Lincoln, 


Torchy falls desperately in love with “the only girl that ever 
was,’ but that young society woman’s aunt tries to keep the young 
people apart, which brings about many hilariously funny situations, 


TORCHY, PRIVATE SEC. Illustrated by F. Foster Lincoln. 


Torchy rises from the position of office boy to that of secretary 
for the Corrugated Iron Company. The story is full of humor and 
infectious American slang. 

WILT THOU TORCHY. Illus. by F. Snapp and A. W. Brown. 


Torchy goes on a treasure search expedition to the Florida West 
Coast, in company with a group of friends of the Corrugated Trust 
and with his friend’s aunt, on which trip Torchy wins the aunt's 
permission to place an engagement ring on Vee's finger. 


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STORIES OF ADVENTURE 


May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Duniap’s list. 


THE RIVER’S END 

A story of the Royal Mounted Police. 
THE GOLDEN SNARE 

Thrilling adventures in the Far Northland. 
NOMADS OF THE NORTH 

The story of a bear-cub and a dog. 
KAZAN 


The tale of a ‘‘quarter-strain wolf and three-quarters husky”’ torn 
between the call of the human and his wild mate. 


BAREE, SON OF KAZAN 


The story of the son of the blind Grey Wolf and the gallant part 
he played in the lives of a man and a woman. 


THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM 


The story of the King of Beaver Island, a Mormon colony, and his 
battle with Captain Plum. 


THE DANGER TRAIL 

A tale of love, Indian vengeance, and a mystery of the North. 
THE HUNTED WOMAN 

A tale of a great fight in the ‘‘ valley of gold’”’ for a woman. 
THE FLOWER OF THE NORTH 


The story of Fort o’ God, where the wild flavor of the wilderness 
is blended with the courtly atmosphere of France, 


THE GRIZZLY KING 

The story of Thor, the big grizzly. 
ISOBEL : 

A love story of the Far North. 
THE WOLF HUNTERS 

A thrilling tale of adventure in the Canadian wilderness, 
THE GOLD HUNTERS 

The story of adventure in the Hudson Bay wilds. 
THE COURAGE OF MARGE O’DOONE 

Filled with exciting incidents in the land of strong men and women, 
BACK TO GOD’S COUNTRY 


A thrilling story of the Far North. The great Photoplay was made 
from this book. 


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FLORENCE L. BARCLAY’S 
NOVELS 


May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list. 


THE WHITE LADIES OF WORCESTER 


A novel of the 12th Century. The heroine, believing she 
had lost her lover, enters a convent. He returns, and in- 
teresting developments follow. 


THE UPAS TREE 


A love story of rare charm. It deals with a successful 
author and his wife. 


THROUGH THE POSTERN GATE 


The story of a seven day courtship, in which the dis- 
crepancy in ages vanished into insignificance before the 
convincing demonstration of abiding love, 


THE ROSARY 


The story of a young artist who is reputed to love beauty 
above all else in the world, but who, when blinded through 
an accident, gains life’s greatest happiness. A rare story 
of the great passion of two real people superbly capable of 
love, its sacrifices and its exceeding reward. 


THE MISTRESS OF SHENSTONE 


The lovely young Lady Ingleby, recently widowed by the 
death of a husband who never understood her, meets a fine, 
clean young chap who is ignorant of her title and they fall 
deeply in love with each other. When he learns her real 
identity a situation of singular power is developed. 


THE BROKEN HALO 

The story of a young man whose religious belief was 
shattered in childhood and restored to him by the little 
white lady, many years older than himself, to whom he is 
passionately devoted. 


THE FOLLOWING OF THE STAR 


The story of a young missionary, who, about to start for 
Africa, marries wealthy Diana Rivers, in order to help her 
fulfill the conditions of her uncle’s will,and how they finally 
come to love each other and are reunited after experiences 
that soften and purify. 


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THE LAMP IN THE DESERT 





The scene of this splendid story is laid in India and 
tells of the lamp of love that continues to shine through 
all sorts of tribulations to final happiness. 


GREATHEART 





The story of a cripple whose deformed body conceals 
i noble soul. 


THE HUNDREDTH CHANCE 





A hero who worked to win even when there was only 
** a hundredth chance.’’ 


THE SWINDLER 





The story of a “‘bad man’s’’ soul revealed by a 
g@oman’s faith. 


THE TIDAL WAVE 





Tales of love and of women who learned to know the 
écue from the false. 


THE SAFETY CURTAIN 





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